More Than Recipes: Kosher Cookbooks as Historical Texts

Abstract

The Jewish Cookery Book, published in 1871 by Esther Jacobs Levy of Philadelphia, is widely accepted as first kosher cookbook in United States. In a tone described by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett as defensive, Levy set out to show Philadelphia Jews identified with English cultural standard of local elite . . . how their elegant tables could also be kosher.1 This desire for elegance foreshadowed an ongoing undercurrent in kosher and Jewish life in United States: drive to emulate and belong without losing an autonomous identity.If, as Steven Tobias writes, cookbooks contain not only recipes but hidden clues and cultural assumptions about race, gender and ethnicity,2 then Levy's book offers a unique glimpse of American Jewish life for a nineteenth-centuiy urban matron. The full title of Esther Jacob Levy's text is Jewish Cookery Book on Principles of Economy, Adapted for Jewish Housekeepers, With Addition of Many Useful Medicinal Recipes, and Other Valuable Information Relative to Housekeeping and Domestic Management. In introduction, Levy sets tone with information as to manner of strictly keeping a Jewish house, including a reminder on need for mezuzahs, instructions on Sabbath preparations, kashering and carving meat, supervising servants, checking bills, and preparing for Passover.3Levy places her audience firmly in women's sphere when she describes preparing home for Passover as a time when Jewish women feel pleasurable emotions at seeing everything in house looking brilliantly clean. She writes that all Jews should feel delighted inasmuch as all cleaning was preparation for becomingly celebrating our wonderful deliverance from bondage.4 Cleaning for Passover means stripping a house bare of any sign of products containing leavened flour (chomets), and casting massive undertaking as a delight can be read as an attempt to elevate drudgery by imbuing it with religious significance couched within work ethic that is at core of American character. It is a notion that echoed a similar book of era; in The American Woman's Home, coauthors and sisters Catharine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe emphasize importance of placid and cheerful temper and tones as a necessary component of a Christian home. The authors suggest that women needed to cultivate those characteristics and make them habitual, in order to maintain a happy household.5 Even if through self-delusron, Benjamrn Franklin's virtues of order, industry, and cleanliness6 are embedded into both Beechers' and Levy's narrative.Levy stressed that her readers should carry out specific traditional duties and responsibilities in their households, each continuing a biblical tradition as a woman of valor described in Proverbs 31.15 as one who riseth while it is yet night and giveth provision to her household. It was assumed that this late nineteenth-century woman would be kosherobservant, despite reality that Reform Jewish leaders were just a few years from declaring kashrut unnecessary. Additionally, 187-page Jewish Cookery Book assumed that its audience would have servants. This was consistent with late nineteenth-century middle-class American urban lifestyle. In years between 1870 and 1910, there was a dramatic increase in number of female domestic servants in United States, an increase David Katzman explained as a result of the rapid industrialization and accompanying urbanization7 of country combined with what Faye Dudden observed as a new concern for status.8 As Levy educated her readers about supervising servants, she was both reflecting and predicting their economic status as upwardly mobile Americans.Levy's text begins with Arrangement of Table, describing how table should be set for breakfast, luncheon, and dinner. For breakfast, this includes instructions on placement of cutleiy and plates, salt shakers and cruets, tea and coffee pots, milk, hot milk, and cream, as well as what should be placed on sideboard. …