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97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement
In ninety-seven Orchard, Jane Ziegelman explores the culinary life that was the heart and soul of New York's Lower East Side around the turn of the twentieth century—a city within a city, where Germans, Irish, Italians, and Eastern European Jews attempted to forge a new life. Through the experiences of five families, all of them residents of ninety-seven Orchard Street, Ziegelman takes readers on a vivid and unforgettable tour, from impossibly cramped tenement apartments, down dimly lit stairwells, beyond the front stoops where housewives congregated, and out into the hubbub of the dirty, teeming streets. Ziegelman shows how immigrant cooks brought their ingenuity to the daily task of feeding their families, preserving traditions from home but always ready to improvise. ninety-seven Orchard lays bare the roots of our collective culinary heritage.
253 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2010
416 people are currently reading
4770 people want to read
About the author
Jane Ziegelman
5 books61 followersJane Ziegelman is the director of the Tenement Museum's culinary center and the founder and director of Kids Cook!, a multiethnic cooking program for children.
Her writing on food has appeared in numerous publications. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Her writing on food has appeared in numerous publications. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 519 reviews
June 4, 2017
One of the things I enjoy about goodreads are the many book challenges offered by groups that allow me to read a wide range of books that I otherwise would not have considered. A popular challenge in a lot of the groups I am in is the A to Z Author Challenge where one reads a book by an author whose last name starts with each letter of the alphabet. For my Z selection I selected 97 Orchard by Jane Zeigelman. Zeigelman is the director of the Kids!Cook program at the New York Tenement House Museum. This book details life of newly arrived immigrants over the course of one hundred years, five families of different ethnic groups who made one building home.
Prior to the civil war, one of the first groups to immigrate to the United States were the Germans. Decades before World War I when they were seen as a threat to security, the Germans were viewed as model immigrants. Being from Western Europe, they blended in with Caucasians already on American soil and they were viewed as hard workers. Yet, Germans hung on to many traditions, including their food. Mid 19th century New York was still very much a rural urban center; Germans opened breweries and factories to produce their national cuisine including sausages and beer. Prior to their arrival, Americans beverage of choice had been rum. Yet, the German presence slowly changed this as taverns and saloons opened in the German neighborhoods, allowing workers to stop for a beer on the way home from a long day. In addition to beer gardens, Germans are responsible for introducing both the hamburger and hotdog into American traditions, both foods now considered a symbol of this country.
After the Germans, the next group to make their presence felt on American soil were the Irish. Fleeing from the Great Potato Famine of the 1840s, parents placed their children on ships in hope that they would have a better life in the United States. Yet, the Irish were met with discrimination from older immigrants, predominately because of their catholic faith. As a result, they were relegated to menial jobs including street cleaning and factory workers. Their culture was their one means of expressing themselves, including the dance that we know today. Zeigelman writes less about Irish cuisine because she points out that as a group they were most likely to eat at home. The one food of theirs that has made inroads in mainstream society has been corned beef and cabbage, although it is still not on par with other foods considered national dishes.
No two groups immigrated to the United States from the 1880s to the 1920s more than Italians and Eastern European Jews. Both groups cooked with savory spices and herbs and were responsible for a plethora of pushcart vendors peddling their cuisine throughout the Lower East Side. While both the bagel and spaghetti and meatballs are revered by Americans today, this was not always the case. Health workers attempted to Americanize both groups, starting with the children attending public schools. They instituted cooking classes in hopes that the children would learn the importance of eating blander foods and bring these lessons home to their parents. Yet, both Italian and Jewish homemakers had been cooking since they were young children and clung to their traditions from home. Despite the valiant efforts of health officials, both ethnic groups continued to prefer the comforts of home including dill pickles and Italian ten course Sunday dinners. Along with the Germans and Irish, Jews and Italians are responsible for creating a melting pot culture as the United States grew to be a country of many immigrants.
Zeigelman weaves the history of immigrants along with their food contributions to American history and key recipes for each ethnic group's cuisine. She points out instances where each group chose to Americanize and others where they adhered to their traditions from home. The 97 Orchard tenement building was emblematic of the changes immigrants underwent over an one hundred year period, and the building is now part of the New York Tenement House Museum. An interesting look at how food influences a people's history, 97 Orchard was a thought provoking read, which I rate 4 stars.
Prior to the civil war, one of the first groups to immigrate to the United States were the Germans. Decades before World War I when they were seen as a threat to security, the Germans were viewed as model immigrants. Being from Western Europe, they blended in with Caucasians already on American soil and they were viewed as hard workers. Yet, Germans hung on to many traditions, including their food. Mid 19th century New York was still very much a rural urban center; Germans opened breweries and factories to produce their national cuisine including sausages and beer. Prior to their arrival, Americans beverage of choice had been rum. Yet, the German presence slowly changed this as taverns and saloons opened in the German neighborhoods, allowing workers to stop for a beer on the way home from a long day. In addition to beer gardens, Germans are responsible for introducing both the hamburger and hotdog into American traditions, both foods now considered a symbol of this country.
After the Germans, the next group to make their presence felt on American soil were the Irish. Fleeing from the Great Potato Famine of the 1840s, parents placed their children on ships in hope that they would have a better life in the United States. Yet, the Irish were met with discrimination from older immigrants, predominately because of their catholic faith. As a result, they were relegated to menial jobs including street cleaning and factory workers. Their culture was their one means of expressing themselves, including the dance that we know today. Zeigelman writes less about Irish cuisine because she points out that as a group they were most likely to eat at home. The one food of theirs that has made inroads in mainstream society has been corned beef and cabbage, although it is still not on par with other foods considered national dishes.
No two groups immigrated to the United States from the 1880s to the 1920s more than Italians and Eastern European Jews. Both groups cooked with savory spices and herbs and were responsible for a plethora of pushcart vendors peddling their cuisine throughout the Lower East Side. While both the bagel and spaghetti and meatballs are revered by Americans today, this was not always the case. Health workers attempted to Americanize both groups, starting with the children attending public schools. They instituted cooking classes in hopes that the children would learn the importance of eating blander foods and bring these lessons home to their parents. Yet, both Italian and Jewish homemakers had been cooking since they were young children and clung to their traditions from home. Despite the valiant efforts of health officials, both ethnic groups continued to prefer the comforts of home including dill pickles and Italian ten course Sunday dinners. Along with the Germans and Irish, Jews and Italians are responsible for creating a melting pot culture as the United States grew to be a country of many immigrants.
Zeigelman weaves the history of immigrants along with their food contributions to American history and key recipes for each ethnic group's cuisine. She points out instances where each group chose to Americanize and others where they adhered to their traditions from home. The 97 Orchard tenement building was emblematic of the changes immigrants underwent over an one hundred year period, and the building is now part of the New York Tenement House Museum. An interesting look at how food influences a people's history, 97 Orchard was a thought provoking read, which I rate 4 stars.
March 29, 2016
This book's title is deceptive. There is very little about the five immigrant families in this book. The real focus is on how the arrival of various groups of immigrants influenced and changed the food world of New York City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The people have little more substance than cardboard figures tucked into the story to illustrate it. And while there is some interesting information about food of the period here, the style is so higgledy- piggledy, jumping from one topic to another, as to make this less than coherent reading.
The people have little more substance than cardboard figures tucked into the story to illustrate it. And while there is some interesting information about food of the period here, the style is so higgledy- piggledy, jumping from one topic to another, as to make this less than coherent reading.
Read
January 26, 2011For me, the most memorable parts of Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a coming-of-age novel set in the tenements of Brooklyn, involve food. When I think about that book, my mind jumps to the scenes when Francie Nolan buys half-priced stale bread from the bread factory wagons or when Francie’s mother tells her how to get the butcher to supply them with fresh ground beef. Food was important. The good times for Francie’s parents are described when they both had steady jobs and were able to eat roast beef with noodles.
I often thought about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn while reading 97 Orchard by Jane Ziegelman. 97 Orchard describes the food cultures of five different immigrant groups that resided in a tenement located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan: the Germans, Irish, German Jews, Russian-Lithuanian Jews, and Italians.
Ziegelman provides details on the staples of each group’s cuisine, the history and recipes of important dishes (such as gefilte fish), and how the food was received in the United States. For the most part, their food was not accepted. Those involved in the settlement houses tried very hard to move immigrant groups away from their food culture by adopting an American diet. The food of Southern Italians was deemed unwholesome because it contained too many vegetables. Thankfully, the Italians weren’t too keen on American cuisine and actually spent a great deal of their money on importing ingredients from Italy.
If you are interested in food or history, I highly recommend 97 Orchard. It is “as good as bread.” --Anne
From ICPL Staff Picks Blog
I often thought about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn while reading 97 Orchard by Jane Ziegelman. 97 Orchard describes the food cultures of five different immigrant groups that resided in a tenement located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan: the Germans, Irish, German Jews, Russian-Lithuanian Jews, and Italians.
Ziegelman provides details on the staples of each group’s cuisine, the history and recipes of important dishes (such as gefilte fish), and how the food was received in the United States. For the most part, their food was not accepted. Those involved in the settlement houses tried very hard to move immigrant groups away from their food culture by adopting an American diet. The food of Southern Italians was deemed unwholesome because it contained too many vegetables. Thankfully, the Italians weren’t too keen on American cuisine and actually spent a great deal of their money on importing ingredients from Italy.
If you are interested in food or history, I highly recommend 97 Orchard. It is “as good as bread.” --Anne
From ICPL Staff Picks Blog
November 20, 2018
This book was a gift from my wife, who knows that I'm interested in history and, well, food. I wasn't convinced that it was something I really was interested in reading, but I found it fascinating. As some other reviewers have said, don't take the subtitle too seriously - there is little history of the five families who lived in the same tenement building at 97 Orchard Street on the lower east side of New York. Rather, those families serve as representatives of five groups of immigrants - Germans, Irish, German Jews, Russian Jews, and Italians - and how food shaped their experience as new Americans.
I learned a lot, and loved almost every minute of it. I was particular surprised to learn, given how much Americans love Italian food, how that food was scorned by "real" Americans for many years. There are 19th- and early-20th-century recipes scattered throughout the book; most of them seem at least a little removed from our 21st-century tastes and standards. But I just might try the lentil soup and the stuffed cabbage.
I learned a lot, and loved almost every minute of it. I was particular surprised to learn, given how much Americans love Italian food, how that food was scorned by "real" Americans for many years. There are 19th- and early-20th-century recipes scattered throughout the book; most of them seem at least a little removed from our 21st-century tastes and standards. But I just might try the lentil soup and the stuffed cabbage.
May 23, 2020
My dad picked this book up at a book sale and thought I would enjoy it and he was right. Two years later I'm getting to it, but better late than never! I'm third generation with my family coming through Ellis Island, so this was a fascinating read of five immigrant families who lived in the same tenement building at 97 Orchard Street on the Lower East Side. With a focus on the food they cooked, as well as some of the food changes happening in this country, it was a fascinating historical read! Zielgelman gets a little too wrapped up in the historical details sometimes and it's a bit uneven in spots; I wanted to learn more about the families, but alas, I'm sure not a lot of information was kept, but it was enjoyable all the same. Now even more I want to visit the Tenement Museum in New York on my next visit! Fingers crossed, that will be sooner rather than later!
December 31, 2010
I actually abandoned this book before finishing it because I found it to be uninteresting and not compelling. I expected a history of specific families and their experiences in the tenement and how these related to the food they ate. In this book the notion is more of a gimmick than a historical tale though, and each family history was basically just a venue for presenting a generalized overview of a certain immigrant group and the foods they ate. The information presented was not very surprising (ie the Germans introduced beer and a variety of sausages to NYC) and I just couldn't stay interested in the narrative. It's too bad, I had really high hopes for this book.
June 26, 2013
Potential, potential,potential. The concept here is great. Let's take a story rich concept (tracking immigrant families through a NY tenament over 40 years) and explain their lives and such. On top of that, let's work food in as a primary detail. I'm game. Sounds awesome. The problem is, there's no story here. This is an educational book. This is like going to a museum and reading the placards around the different exhibits. This makes sense to a degree since its tied to 97 Orchard - New York's tenament museum. I didn't get that at all from the book flaps. I was fully expecting a story. I was expecting tales of hardship and triumph and woe and joy. Note...I also missed that this was mostly about food which I should have gathered by the sub-title.
I like going to museums. I read all the little write-ups. All of them. In that context this was great. If I was reading this in the tenament museum I probably would have loved it. The basic layout had potential and there were stretches that were great. Some spoilers below... Each chapter started with a little history of the "characters" and their people (German Jew, Irish, Hungarian Jew, Italian and a fifth I have missed). There's a bit of history (which I always enjoy) and a brief background of the specific folks. But there's a lot of generalities. They could have been this, could have done this. The story isn't there. The "characters" are just a conduit to speak about their food traditions. The next thirty-fifty pages are basically an expansive list of their habits (shopping, coking, eating) of a class and type of people. They check in with the family on occasion, buy not nearly enough. Also sprinkled through is recipes. Again, the book is mostly tied to food.
Again...this is interesting. But the sales pitch is wrong. Its misleading to present this as a history of the families or the tenament. Its neither. Its a discussion or lesson on food. The tenament barely plays into it. And the families are very generic with information pulled from a census. As a museum tied piece (and I'm 99% sure this is) they probably have to stick to the facts. But, I would love to see more tie-ins to the family. More...story.
Overall...there is potential here. It just doesn't come through. If you love food and love non-fiction this one is good for you. If you love the tenament museum then yes. If you want a tale of five families living their lives (actually doing something other than eating) then take a pass.
This book was a gift from my wife at Christmas. I was actually pretty stoked to read it. Sad that it didn't pan out...
I like going to museums. I read all the little write-ups. All of them. In that context this was great. If I was reading this in the tenament museum I probably would have loved it. The basic layout had potential and there were stretches that were great. Some spoilers below... Each chapter started with a little history of the "characters" and their people (German Jew, Irish, Hungarian Jew, Italian and a fifth I have missed). There's a bit of history (which I always enjoy) and a brief background of the specific folks. But there's a lot of generalities. They could have been this, could have done this. The story isn't there. The "characters" are just a conduit to speak about their food traditions. The next thirty-fifty pages are basically an expansive list of their habits (shopping, coking, eating) of a class and type of people. They check in with the family on occasion, buy not nearly enough. Also sprinkled through is recipes. Again, the book is mostly tied to food.
Again...this is interesting. But the sales pitch is wrong. Its misleading to present this as a history of the families or the tenament. Its neither. Its a discussion or lesson on food. The tenament barely plays into it. And the families are very generic with information pulled from a census. As a museum tied piece (and I'm 99% sure this is) they probably have to stick to the facts. But, I would love to see more tie-ins to the family. More...story.
Overall...there is potential here. It just doesn't come through. If you love food and love non-fiction this one is good for you. If you love the tenament museum then yes. If you want a tale of five families living their lives (actually doing something other than eating) then take a pass.
This book was a gift from my wife at Christmas. I was actually pretty stoked to read it. Sad that it didn't pan out...
June 12, 2012
This should have been exactly up my alley, being about food history and inspired by one of the best museums in the country (the Tenement Museum in New York), but it bugged me a little. It's hard to say exactly why. I really enjoyed most of it, and I learned a lot about the evolution of ethnic restaurants in NYC and the ways that hot dogs and pastrami and spaghetti were introduced to the American palate through these immigrant communities. There are some recipes included, and they seem manageable, at least some of them (Maybe I can make some Challah bread! That would be fun). The structural device of using five real families who lived at one time or another in this one tenement was a good idea- though really, Ziegelman spends very little time on each family. Introducing each one is just a way to talk about Germans, then Jews, then Italians, etc.
What bugged me though, primarily, was that Ziegelman writes things sometimes that seemed to come out of left field, and for which she doesn't provide any proof. Like "Abandonment was a special class of hardship reserved for East Side women" (104). Really? The only men who abandoned their wives were poor Lower East Siders? That can't be right. What is she basing that on? On page 175 she writes that street peddlers would drink "ten, twelve, fifteen glasses" of tea at the end of a workday. But there's no citation or anything- where is this coming from? I'm not saying I don't believe it, but I'd like to know where she got the information. Because at other times in the book, she seems to lean heavily on newspaper stories of the time that were not altogether neutral. When writing about Irish boarding house proprietors, for example, Ziegelman quotes from a New York Times piece from the 1870s, which describes a "slatternly" Irish maid and a boarding house lady buying disgusting meat for the tenants. According to Ziegelman, this "tells the story...of boardinghouse cuisine." But really? This is an unbiased source? I'm a little dubious.
But my dubiousness aside, if you are interested in foodways and how certain foods became "American", and how immigrants reinvented their cuisine when they got here (at least east coast immigrants), then I recommend giving this book a look.
What bugged me though, primarily, was that Ziegelman writes things sometimes that seemed to come out of left field, and for which she doesn't provide any proof. Like "Abandonment was a special class of hardship reserved for East Side women" (104). Really? The only men who abandoned their wives were poor Lower East Siders? That can't be right. What is she basing that on? On page 175 she writes that street peddlers would drink "ten, twelve, fifteen glasses" of tea at the end of a workday. But there's no citation or anything- where is this coming from? I'm not saying I don't believe it, but I'd like to know where she got the information. Because at other times in the book, she seems to lean heavily on newspaper stories of the time that were not altogether neutral. When writing about Irish boarding house proprietors, for example, Ziegelman quotes from a New York Times piece from the 1870s, which describes a "slatternly" Irish maid and a boarding house lady buying disgusting meat for the tenants. According to Ziegelman, this "tells the story...of boardinghouse cuisine." But really? This is an unbiased source? I'm a little dubious.
But my dubiousness aside, if you are interested in foodways and how certain foods became "American", and how immigrants reinvented their cuisine when they got here (at least east coast immigrants), then I recommend giving this book a look.
June 25, 2011
If you mix a people's NYC history from the period of 1890's through 1930's, full of every kind of immigrant with their crazy last names, constant clatter of languages, bustles and suspenders, greasy packs and steamtrunks, and mix that with the smells of knish and streudel, mutton chops and saurkraut, almonds in sugar syrup and gelato, I WILL MOST LIKELY READ YOUR BOOK. Something about that great expectation, enough to spend your last penny to ship your family across the globe for a new beginning, it just gives me shivers. Throw in some photos and I'm yours.
I loved reading this book more than, most likely, the average reader, but I think I've explained my bias. However, I am able to step back and note that the organization of this material was not ideal. The device of following each family as they lived at one address over the decades was a cute idea that couldn't follow through. There was just too little documentation to really provide a good picture, and the author fell to using comparables so often, she probably just shouldn't have tried to manufacture a thread that couldn't take the weight. Also, she jumped around decades with wild abandon, from 1890 in one sentence to 1924 in the next. It was hard to keep straight the evolution of immigrant food over any span of time, which I believe was really the point. But what was great were some fabulous recipes, most of which I'm sure I'll never try, some interesting tidbits on kosher cooking, and an intriguing history of the public school lunch program. This is a good read for anyone interested in immigrant America and our melting pot of what's for dinner, but if you're looking for a seamless narrative to guide you through, this isn't it.
I loved reading this book more than, most likely, the average reader, but I think I've explained my bias. However, I am able to step back and note that the organization of this material was not ideal. The device of following each family as they lived at one address over the decades was a cute idea that couldn't follow through. There was just too little documentation to really provide a good picture, and the author fell to using comparables so often, she probably just shouldn't have tried to manufacture a thread that couldn't take the weight. Also, she jumped around decades with wild abandon, from 1890 in one sentence to 1924 in the next. It was hard to keep straight the evolution of immigrant food over any span of time, which I believe was really the point. But what was great were some fabulous recipes, most of which I'm sure I'll never try, some interesting tidbits on kosher cooking, and an intriguing history of the public school lunch program. This is a good read for anyone interested in immigrant America and our melting pot of what's for dinner, but if you're looking for a seamless narrative to guide you through, this isn't it.
October 28, 2010
97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement is remarkable not only for its stunningly rich documentation, but for the richness of its unique central idea: an intensive, extensive study of the foodways of European immigrant families who lived in a single tenement building over five decades. Using the building as the setting for her dramatic narrative, author and food historian Jane Ziegelman tells the multilayered, multidimensional stories of German, Irish, Jewish, Lithuanian, and Italian residents and the food traditions they celebrated.
In 1863, a prosperous German tailor built a home for his family in New York's Lower East Side, and rented out the other apartments in his building to German acquaintances. Using an impressive range of primary sources, Ziegelman reconstructs not only the history of Lucas Glockner's new building, but the story of the larger tenement neighborhood, product of the sharp rise in immigration that had begun some 40 years earlier and continued for more than a century. But the real heart of her narrative is the food the German immigrants ate, described in the German cookbooks Zielegman quotes (recipes included in the text), the groceries sold in the shops and bakeries on Orchard Street and in the larger markets, and prepared by Mrs. Glockner for her family. Ziegelman even takes us into the saloons and beer halls, and to the picnic grounds where huge Volksfests were held.
The remaining four chapters of the book are marked by the same careful, skillful attention to historical detail, food origins, culinary traditions, and even grocery lists. The Irish Moore family ate potatoes, fish hash, and corned beef and cabbage, and frequented restaurants such as Dolan's, where they could buy oyster stew for 20 cents, pickled tongue for ten, and crullers for a nickel. Mrs. Gumpertz, a quintessential Jewish mother, is pictured making gefilte fish (a dish brought from the Old Country, along with the oblong gefilte fish pot and the Sabbath candlesticks) and other Jewish specialties. The Rogarshevskys, who came to live at 97 Orchard after their arrival at Ellis Island in 1901, found the neighborhood full of pushcarts, where they could shop for the makings of their daily soups. During the Depression, the Baldizzis, like other Italian immigrants, spent their tiny food budget on a few indispensable staples: bread, pasta, beans, lentils, and olive oil, with free groceries provided weekly by Governor Roosevelt's Home Relief Program.
Over the decades, 97 Orchard Street was home to nearly 7000 working class immigrants. Boarded up for half a century, the building now houses the New York Tenement Museum (http://www.tenement.org), which features museum apartments that reconstruct the living situation for families like the Glockners and the Moores. For a look into the building, visit the Tenement Museum's website. And then read Jane Ziegelman's fine book, which so fully and dramatically documents the way the building's residents celebrated life in their new country with food cultures brought from the old.
97 Orchard: An Edible History is social history at its very best, fully documented and beautifully written, a stunning testimony to the importance of food in our lives. Kudos to Jane Ziegelman for an original idea, artfully and provocatively executed!
In 1863, a prosperous German tailor built a home for his family in New York's Lower East Side, and rented out the other apartments in his building to German acquaintances. Using an impressive range of primary sources, Ziegelman reconstructs not only the history of Lucas Glockner's new building, but the story of the larger tenement neighborhood, product of the sharp rise in immigration that had begun some 40 years earlier and continued for more than a century. But the real heart of her narrative is the food the German immigrants ate, described in the German cookbooks Zielegman quotes (recipes included in the text), the groceries sold in the shops and bakeries on Orchard Street and in the larger markets, and prepared by Mrs. Glockner for her family. Ziegelman even takes us into the saloons and beer halls, and to the picnic grounds where huge Volksfests were held.
The remaining four chapters of the book are marked by the same careful, skillful attention to historical detail, food origins, culinary traditions, and even grocery lists. The Irish Moore family ate potatoes, fish hash, and corned beef and cabbage, and frequented restaurants such as Dolan's, where they could buy oyster stew for 20 cents, pickled tongue for ten, and crullers for a nickel. Mrs. Gumpertz, a quintessential Jewish mother, is pictured making gefilte fish (a dish brought from the Old Country, along with the oblong gefilte fish pot and the Sabbath candlesticks) and other Jewish specialties. The Rogarshevskys, who came to live at 97 Orchard after their arrival at Ellis Island in 1901, found the neighborhood full of pushcarts, where they could shop for the makings of their daily soups. During the Depression, the Baldizzis, like other Italian immigrants, spent their tiny food budget on a few indispensable staples: bread, pasta, beans, lentils, and olive oil, with free groceries provided weekly by Governor Roosevelt's Home Relief Program.
Over the decades, 97 Orchard Street was home to nearly 7000 working class immigrants. Boarded up for half a century, the building now houses the New York Tenement Museum (http://www.tenement.org), which features museum apartments that reconstruct the living situation for families like the Glockners and the Moores. For a look into the building, visit the Tenement Museum's website. And then read Jane Ziegelman's fine book, which so fully and dramatically documents the way the building's residents celebrated life in their new country with food cultures brought from the old.
97 Orchard: An Edible History is social history at its very best, fully documented and beautifully written, a stunning testimony to the importance of food in our lives. Kudos to Jane Ziegelman for an original idea, artfully and provocatively executed!
July 17, 2013
The author traces five immigrant families -- all of whom lived in the 7 Orchard tenement in New York in the late nineteenth early twentieth century. The reader sees how these families lived and what they ate. In addition you'll be treated to a history of foods that finally made their way to the American palette and stayed there-- foods like pasta, frankfurters, a version of hamburger, pretzels, and many more. In addition I learned about the types of food shops and immigrant run restaurants that became famous in New York City during the late 19th century. The families-- Russian, Jewish, Irish, German, and Italian provide a background for the author to present a history of immigrant foods in New York. One chapter was devoted to Ellis Island the place where many immigrants stayed before coming over the mainland. Some never made it, because they were sent back, but they were fed very well before returning home. The book is a collection of all sorts of interesting tales about this time in American history--plus lots of recipes depicting immigrant foods. Many of which could be made today and relished.
July 31, 2025
Picked up this book in the Tenement History Museum in NYC which is on 97 Orchard Street as my sister and I are endlessly fascinated about NYC culinary history in particular Jewish cooking that takes us back to many of the dishes of our home, Romania, that intersection between Eastern European cooking found in the surviving delis of New York: places like Yonah Shimmel's Knishery, B&H, Katz, Barney's Greengrass, although Barney's is on Upper West side not in the Lower East side where these establishments dating back to the beginnings of NYC culinary immigrant history were and some are still situated.
The book starts with the waves of immigration that have made NYC the culinary melting pot of the world starting in the 19th century with the Germans, moving on to the Irish, to the Jewish and the Southern Italians who have fundamentally changed the way modern day Americans and as a result the western world eats, with their strange string like creations ie spaghetti for example. For the food enthusiast and the culinary historian this novel is a delicatessen and very easily digestible; I even made a few tenement recipes from it although the sweet knish remains a mystery...the search goes on but this summer we might just crack it!
The book starts with the waves of immigration that have made NYC the culinary melting pot of the world starting in the 19th century with the Germans, moving on to the Irish, to the Jewish and the Southern Italians who have fundamentally changed the way modern day Americans and as a result the western world eats, with their strange string like creations ie spaghetti for example. For the food enthusiast and the culinary historian this novel is a delicatessen and very easily digestible; I even made a few tenement recipes from it although the sweet knish remains a mystery...the search goes on but this summer we might just crack it!
March 12, 2025
Very interesting book about the immigrants who came to the U.S. in the 1800's through the 1930's and the foods that they ate. While trying hard to assimilate, the one area that they retained their own identify was in the food. The book follows 5 immigrant groups and thoroughly explains what they ate, where and how it was marketed, purchased, shared, etc. The name comes from the tenement address in which the families all lived, at least at one time. It is now the Tenement Museum in NY City. Well written and not too long. I enjoyed it!
April 4, 2011
I read this because I visited the Lower East Side Tenement Museum at 97 Orchard last year. Jane Ziegelman is director of a new cooking program at the museum. The book purports to be the story of five families who lived at 97 Orchard: the Glockners, the Gumpertzes, the Moores, the Rogarshevskys, and the Baldizzis. When I visited, I saw the Gumpertz and Balidizzi apartments. Several Goodreads reviewers have commented that the book doesn't really focus on the families in the way that the title implies, and I suppose that's true, but that's really a fault of the title and not the book. As Ziegelman points out, poor people don't leave much of a paper trail, so, for the earlier families,at least, she had to rely on census data and municipal records to extrapolate the family story.
The meat of the book (if I may indulge in a food metaphor) is more general, i.e. the Moore chapter deals with the broader experience of the Irish immigrants. This chapter yielded the most interesting factoid. I knew that the Irish peasants in the 19th century subsisted almost entirely on potatoes (approx. 12 lbs per day per person), with the rest of the island's copious food production being consigned to export. What I didn't know was that they made the potatoes palatable with one of a number of separately consumed flavor agents known generically as "kitchen." This could be buttermilk, seaweed, salt fish or, at the most impoverished level , water infused with black pepper. Just as the Moore chapter focuses on the Irish relationship with potatoes, each of the other chapters highlights a foodstuff of deep significance to the culture under discussion: beer for the Gentile German Glockners, schmaltz for the Jewish German Gumpertzes (I also never knew, though it seems obvious now that I do, why poultry fat is so ubiquitous in Jewish cuisine - Jews couln't cook with lard or butter, the preferred fats in Central and Eastern Europe), pickles for the Lithuanian Jewish Rogarshevskys, and bread for the Sicilian Baldizzis.
There were a few annoyingly cute moments ("Let's look in on Mrs. Gumpertz"-type stuff), but very few. I though it was very well-written, well-organized, authoritative, and highly informative. Each chapter included recipes, which is a little trendy, but I thought the conceit worked better here than in the novels where I've encountered it. I would definitely recommend this to any foodie or history buff.
The meat of the book (if I may indulge in a food metaphor) is more general, i.e. the Moore chapter deals with the broader experience of the Irish immigrants. This chapter yielded the most interesting factoid. I knew that the Irish peasants in the 19th century subsisted almost entirely on potatoes (approx. 12 lbs per day per person), with the rest of the island's copious food production being consigned to export. What I didn't know was that they made the potatoes palatable with one of a number of separately consumed flavor agents known generically as "kitchen." This could be buttermilk, seaweed, salt fish or, at the most impoverished level , water infused with black pepper. Just as the Moore chapter focuses on the Irish relationship with potatoes, each of the other chapters highlights a foodstuff of deep significance to the culture under discussion: beer for the Gentile German Glockners, schmaltz for the Jewish German Gumpertzes (I also never knew, though it seems obvious now that I do, why poultry fat is so ubiquitous in Jewish cuisine - Jews couln't cook with lard or butter, the preferred fats in Central and Eastern Europe), pickles for the Lithuanian Jewish Rogarshevskys, and bread for the Sicilian Baldizzis.
There were a few annoyingly cute moments ("Let's look in on Mrs. Gumpertz"-type stuff), but very few. I though it was very well-written, well-organized, authoritative, and highly informative. Each chapter included recipes, which is a little trendy, but I thought the conceit worked better here than in the novels where I've encountered it. I would definitely recommend this to any foodie or history buff.
September 7, 2011
97 ORCHARD is a fun and educational read for even the most casual of foodie. The book discusses life of turn of the century immigrants from the late 1800's to the start of World War I. The typical life of German, Irish, Russian Jew and Italian immigrants are focused on and it is all presented through they eyes of their food. Unquestionably a very unique take on the immigrants story.
The story follows chronologically from the earliest influx of Germans on through the Italian influx leading into the first World War. The story revolves around a single family from each ethnicity all connected by having lived in the same tennemant building at one time or another, 97 Orchard Street. The story however is about the foods they ate both as a family and as a people. Ultimatly this is a story about food history, the families serve to put a face to the food.
The author, Jane Ziegelman has put together a smart and well researched book. A history of food not often told, 97 Orchard should be listed as an important food book. I have noted many other reviews of this book somtimes lambaste it for misrepresenting it as a tale of immigrant families but those reviews really miss the point of the book to begin with. Don't read this as a people history but as a food history and you will not be disappointed.
The story follows chronologically from the earliest influx of Germans on through the Italian influx leading into the first World War. The story revolves around a single family from each ethnicity all connected by having lived in the same tennemant building at one time or another, 97 Orchard Street. The story however is about the foods they ate both as a family and as a people. Ultimatly this is a story about food history, the families serve to put a face to the food.
The author, Jane Ziegelman has put together a smart and well researched book. A history of food not often told, 97 Orchard should be listed as an important food book. I have noted many other reviews of this book somtimes lambaste it for misrepresenting it as a tale of immigrant families but those reviews really miss the point of the book to begin with. Don't read this as a people history but as a food history and you will not be disappointed.
February 27, 2011
This was an interesting but not well-structured discussion of immigration and culinary history, focused on five families (German, Italian, Irish, and both German and Russian Jews) in one New York tenement building (97 Orchard Street, to be exact). The information was fascinating, there were both recipes and many excerpts from 19th century newspapers and cookbooks, and there was lots of discussion about how food was both a way to assimilate but also to maintain culture. Each family gets a chapter but the discussion within each chapter is often so wide-ranging that when there's once again a mention of the family, you're like, "Oh yeah. The Moores. I'd forgotten about them."
This wealth of information would be much easier to digest and remember if the author had worked to make certain themes more apparent (I could see them in the raw data itself) and used them to give structure to the five individual chapters. The book just ends with no attempt to make any final connections between the families or about food and immigration. Instead, we learn what Mrs. Baldizzi fed her children on New Year's so there first taste in the new year would be sweet.
That said, this book made me want to go to the Tenement Museum in NYC.
This wealth of information would be much easier to digest and remember if the author had worked to make certain themes more apparent (I could see them in the raw data itself) and used them to give structure to the five individual chapters. The book just ends with no attempt to make any final connections between the families or about food and immigration. Instead, we learn what Mrs. Baldizzi fed her children on New Year's so there first taste in the new year would be sweet.
That said, this book made me want to go to the Tenement Museum in NYC.
June 21, 2012
The subtitle is "An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement." Unfortunately, that is not what the book is about. Rather, the author uses 5 families--the amount of info she has on each family can easily be found by a genealogist 30 minutes or less--of different ethnic groups who all lived in one building at some point over a 70-year timespan to frame a basic discussion of different food ways. Irish, German, German Jewish, Eastern European Jewish, and (southern) Italian.
Only, the writing is so all over the place that you don't know what the topic will be paragraph to paragraph. She discusses settlement houses, the dining room at Ellis Island, free lunch in New York's public schools, the spread of the potato through Europe, pushcart markets. She makes sweeping generalizations that are questionable or so obvious as to be either "huh?" or "duh!". For example, Reform Jews eat banned foods, poor people make do, potatoes have lots of calories, poor people don't eat much meat, Americans did not like immigrants, and tenements were dark.
Basically, this book does not tell the story it claims to, and pretty much reads like a senior thesis--lots of sources, no original work. Very disappointing.
Only, the writing is so all over the place that you don't know what the topic will be paragraph to paragraph. She discusses settlement houses, the dining room at Ellis Island, free lunch in New York's public schools, the spread of the potato through Europe, pushcart markets. She makes sweeping generalizations that are questionable or so obvious as to be either "huh?" or "duh!". For example, Reform Jews eat banned foods, poor people make do, potatoes have lots of calories, poor people don't eat much meat, Americans did not like immigrants, and tenements were dark.
Basically, this book does not tell the story it claims to, and pretty much reads like a senior thesis--lots of sources, no original work. Very disappointing.
September 29, 2015
This book is a fascinating and entertaining venture of the culinary experience of living in the tenements over a period of over sixty years and multiple waves of immigrants and nationalities. It covers the German, Irish, German-Jewish, Eastern European Jewish, and Italian waves of immigration.
The Tenement Museum on NYC's Lower East Side is a favorite place of mine, and this book goes incredibly well in tandem with having visited it several times. The book doesn't delve too deeply into the family's personal stories and histories, which won't give away much of what one experiences on the tours at the museum (although, I, personally, was hoping to read more about these incredibly interesting families!). Nonetheless, the author has poured countless hours into the research that created this book, and you might walk away also wanting to make a few of the recipes!
The Tenement Museum on NYC's Lower East Side is a favorite place of mine, and this book goes incredibly well in tandem with having visited it several times. The book doesn't delve too deeply into the family's personal stories and histories, which won't give away much of what one experiences on the tours at the museum (although, I, personally, was hoping to read more about these incredibly interesting families!). Nonetheless, the author has poured countless hours into the research that created this book, and you might walk away also wanting to make a few of the recipes!
August 10, 2018
The title is deceiving since you think it’s about 5 families yet it’s really a history of food in New York City’s immigrant neighborhoods in the 1850-1930. That’s okay. This was Fascinating. This is a timely read as we are seeing immigrant relations in the news all the time. This gives me some background into Ellis Island although that is only a small part. Mostly it answers the question of what did immigrants in the city eat? How did they live?
February 4, 2019
I found the chapter on Eastern European Jewish food culture the most interesting, with its discussion of Ellis Island dining halls, the expansion of kosher eating and options on the Lower East Side, the pushcart culture of NY, etc. I'd have liked more on each family, because this is really more a history of five culinary cultures, members of which happened to live in 97 Orchard. Still, quite interesting in places.
March 26, 2025
I enjoyed this book very much and it was informative about the general experiences of immigrants living in the Lower East Side of New York during the 19th century. The five families are each representative of a larger immigration trend, serving as a template illustrating German, Irish, German Jewish, Eastern European Jewish, and Italian experiences upon arriving in New York. Each group brought their distinct foodways with them and as they settled, American cuisine and available foods had impact on how immigrants cooked, and in turn their tastes and methods of food preparation left marks on the American palate as well. I have a general interest in food history so I was very satisfied by what this book covered.
I notice in the reviews some people are disappointed that the book doesn't get into the lives of the individual family members in more detail. I will note that in a lot of cases for average individuals in history--these people were not movers or shakers and did not make distinct marks on anything other than their immediate neighbors--there may not be much documentary evidence to be gleaned. You'll note several more personal stories from the last two families, the Rogarshevskys and the Baldizzis; it appears there is more documentary evidence and even some personal stories from the children in the family to supplement what the author was able to research. But overall this is a culinary history of immigrants of particular backgrounds living in a particular area of New York City in a timeframe rather than biographies of individual families.
I notice in the reviews some people are disappointed that the book doesn't get into the lives of the individual family members in more detail. I will note that in a lot of cases for average individuals in history--these people were not movers or shakers and did not make distinct marks on anything other than their immediate neighbors--there may not be much documentary evidence to be gleaned. You'll note several more personal stories from the last two families, the Rogarshevskys and the Baldizzis; it appears there is more documentary evidence and even some personal stories from the children in the family to supplement what the author was able to research. But overall this is a culinary history of immigrants of particular backgrounds living in a particular area of New York City in a timeframe rather than biographies of individual families.
July 25, 2021
After touring the Tenement Museum in New York, I went in the tourist shop and picked this book up along with one other. The book does a light history of five families that lived in the tenement on 97 Orchard, and tells of the kinds of food they ate, or were most likely to eat, based on history of where the family came from. The families were selected from census info which was kept by the agencies that do such things, and they started in chronological order from about 1863, and went to 1935. The account used info from the countries the families came from for their diet, and followed with what was known about what they could and did use for food when they got here. Street vendors were a big part of the book. A romanticized telling of what it was like to be a street vendor, and what it was like to have a street full of vendors, and where they were in the city, was a good part of the book. There are recipes in the book to follow for some of the food these immigrants ate. I think anyone who enjoys history of any kind would enjoy this book.
January 13, 2023
A history of the culinary life of New York City’s Lower East Side, featuring the stories of five families who lived in the tenement located at 97 Orchard Street between the years of 1860-1930. The book takes a broader look at how immigrants of various nationalities affected the city’s foodways, from pushcart merchants to delicatessens to urban poultry farmers raising geese in tenement basements. It’s fascinating stuff, especially if you’re interested in culinary history or in New York City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I was hoping to recognize some of my own family food traditions, but nothing struck a particular chord. Still, very interesting reading!
January 22, 2025
This book was a treasure to me because of the way it combined food, history, and European culture (especially Jewish). Intersecting 19th and 20th century immigration with the details of what it looked like for those food cultures to come together produces a food history rich in meaning and generational iteration and ingenuity. Really cool to see where many of our American food traditions come from—imagine discovering spaghetti for the first time! Hilarious!
I took a long time to listen to this book, listening to it in shortish spurts, but I think this worked well. This book does not read like a novel. It’s rich in detail and small amounts make it easier to enjoy.
I took a long time to listen to this book, listening to it in shortish spurts, but I think this worked well. This book does not read like a novel. It’s rich in detail and small amounts make it easier to enjoy.
November 17, 2019
This is everything I love about a non-fiction book: history, immigration, family stories, and food. Ziegelman tells the stories of families from Ireland, Germany/Prussia, Russia, and Italy based on records of their arrival, employment, births of children, and residency in a particular tenement building in NYC. Interspersed with photos, vivid descriptions of beer halls, street vendors, markets, and meals, she paints a picture of 19th century Manhattan that brought to life the immigrant experience and made me add the Orchard Street Tenement Museum to my list of Must-Visits.
July 13, 2020
I really enjoyed this book although I did find the title a tad misleading. It does mention five individual families but more so follows the larger 'family' of immigrants from their particular country. Nevertheless, I was engrossed and found myself talking about it to anyone who would listen. I am left with one major thought after peeking into the pitiful kitchens and sparse pantries: Women are absolutely amazing and resilient. So often a meal was made out of virtually nothing yet food was presented on a decently set table and traditions were kept. Thank you, Jane Ziegelman, I feel smarter for having read this book.
August 24, 2020
97 Orchard barely has anything to do with five specific immigrant families, as the title states, but it does offer an edible history of five immigrant groups in one New York tenement. The book was interesting on many levels; the most basic was seeing how the everyday foods were once so exotic- spaghetti! It's also knowing history to understand the present moment. Immigrants coming for a better life isn't a new phenomenon and our country's dependence on them isn't new either. Immigrants have always fed our country. Food is a fascinating way to look at the immigrant experience.
August 28, 2021
Interesting look at the foodways of five different immigrant groups in New York, but I was a little disappointed--I was expecting a lot more focus on the families themselves and the building they lived in, but that was merely the hook; the book is almost entirely about the foods that people like them cooked and ate. While reading the meager facts about the families themselves, the genealogist in me kept thinking, wait! Did you look for a death certificate for possible place of birth? Did you check this or that record? I recognize that the families themselves were apparently not the author's main interest, but the title was a little deceptive. That said, there was some fascinating material here--just not the book I was expecting.
February 13, 2018
Ingenuity abounds in this history of feeding families and the food culture waves of immigration brought to the United States. This was also an eyeopening look (for me) at conditions at Ellis Island while hopeful immigrants waited to be approved for entry into the country at large. I was expecting to feel more engaged with the five families featured, but this really was all about the food. Recipes included!
March 28, 2024
I loved it. The descriptions made me forget I was sitting in my house. I could smell the smells (sometimes unfortunate), and feel the time period. I visited the Lower East Side Tenement Museum around 20 years ago. Although our tour guide was less than stellar it was quite the education. I'm not sure they had the food tours then that they have now. I need to re-visit. Thanks to that visit, I was able to picture the interior of 97 Orchard. There are plenty of photos on the internet. Jane Ziegelman did an excellent job!!
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