Nathalie Ross

Introduction

Jewish American cookbooks published in the 19^th century were primarily written for those of German and Yiddish-speaking descent and grappled with the duality of performing Jewish and American identities.  Yet, principles of Judeo-Spanish culinary practices are evident in the period’s most popular and influential general audience culinary texts, such as those written by Hannah Glasse, the 18^th century’s highest-selling author.  Her cookbook, The Art of Cookery, was originally published in the UK in 1747, updated and reprinted for U.S. audiences in 1805, and was subject to no less than seventeen editions in between.  

This essay links the recipes of the Medieval Iberian kitchen, especially those of the Spanish Inquisition Trials, to several dishes featured in Glasse’s Art of Cookery.  By analyzing the Spanish and Portuguese recipes in Glasse’s text, the enduring strength of Sephardic culture’s oral transmission and steadfastness in the diaspora will be revealed.  Specifically, as immigrant Jews claimed their citizenship to the primarily white, Anglo-Saxon American nation, culinary texts became a testament to the durability of women’s oral convention in Sephardic tradition.

Historical Overview: The Public and Private Lives of Jews in the Diaspora

The home became the center of Jewish practice and expression after the demise of Jewish institutional, religious, and spiritual life during the Reconquista and early period of the Spanish Inquisition (1381-1560).  Traditionally male institutions, such as the synagogue, were destroyed, and formal worship and Jewish observance shifted from the public domain to the private.  The transmission of Jewish culture and identity, as well as religion, became gendered in the Sephardi diaspora. Where men dominated in the synagogue, and the language of prayer—Hebrew—women’s sphere of influence was the house and family.  Men ceded to women’s authority after Jewish institutions were closed and banned in the Iberian Peninsula, and religious observance became private and shifted to the home.  Women became the designated keepers of the Sephardic faith, and especially of the rituals that ensured the survival and transference of Jewishness.  Since women did not depend on religious and civic institutions outside of the home, their communal status and responsibilities became elevated, creating a separate sphere of female influence or what Isaac Jack Lévy, Professor of Spanish and Literature, and Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt, Professor of Anthropology and Folklore, refer to as the “domestication of religion.”¹  In Medieval Spanish culture, women were largely invisible and men controlled their public and private lives.  As men retreated from public religious leadership, women continued their domestic roles by preparing Sabbath and holiday meals, baking matzah for Passover, lighting candles and presiding over Sabbath prayers, and keeping the Jewish dietary laws—markers of Jewish identity and of particular interest to the Inquisition authorities.²  Sephardic historian Christina Galasso explains that “as women took on a crucial role in the construction and transmission of Jewish traditions, there was a corresponding privatization of ritual and practice, the development of a domestic religiosity.”³  Since their expulsion from Spain, Sephardic women have asserted a direct role in preserving and transmitting Jewish culture as the “priestesses” of their home.⁴ 

As institutions were displaced from the public to the private sphere, so was the center of Jewish life—making women the unique keepers of the faith.  Sephardic culinary traditions and culture were strengthened in the home and diffused through the oral transmission of recipes and cooking instruction from one generation to the next.  Galasso writes that Jews, often recognized as “the People of the Book,” found themselves without their sacred religious texts, much less with cookbooks and became dependent on the oral authority and transmission of Jewish culture, wisdom, and identity.⁵  Culinary historian Gil Marks relates that Jews famously did not write down recipes, as many of the women who were primarily entrusted with culinary knowledge, were not literate.  In addition, since books were handwritten, they were prohibitively expensive and reserved for prayer and study rather than for documenting mundane tasks, such as cooking.  It is plausible that Jews scribed the names of dishes or individual ingredients, but they would not have kept records of full recipes.  The strength of Jewish culinary culture relied on the oral tradition passed on from mother to daughter.  “If recipes were not transmitted from mother to daughter, they were lost.”  The stability of the oral tradition is exemplified in another notable Jewish cookbook, Lady Judith Montefiore’s 1841, The Jewish Manual, the first English-language, kosher and Jewish text.  Published in London, Montefiore’s book revealed several dishes that had never before appeared in print in English language cookbooks, such as Kugle and Commean, the conventional slow-cooked, Sephardic Sabbath stew or Adafina (also referred to as Hamin).⁶  This dish is the only meat dish in The Jewish Manual that is historically connected to the cuisine of Medieval Spanish Jews and was also used as a marker of Jewish identity during the Spanish Inquisition trials.  Dr. Hélène Jawhawa Piñer explains that the Adafina is the only food that was specifically associated with heresy during Inquisition trials, making it a definitive marker of Jewishness.⁷  The precariousness of Medieval Iberian Jewish life, and the inability to worship publicly or engage openly in civic Jewish and communal life underscored the loss of male authority and the shift to the domestic sphere where “women had always been in charge.”⁸

The exodus of the Jewish community from the Iberian Peninsula post-1492 to lands where they could worship freely presented several challenges and opportunities.  On the one hand, there was significant reliance on women as sentinels of Jewish tradition, rituals, and customs.  On the other, the construction of synagogues and Jewish communal institutions, such as cemeteries, ushered in a return to paternalistic religious observance and family structure.  If the “synagogue was where Jewish identity was constructed,” and the home was where it was expressed and transmitted, then the erection of formal Jewish institutions in the diaspora initiated a reversion to traditional gender roles.⁹  In colonial America, early Jewish settlers—men—were eager to publicly assert their religiosity and regain authority over the religious matters of their communities thereby redefining, and diminishing, women’s power. Women were stripped of the religious and ritual responsibilities they had governed in the home—like the education of children—and were pushed back into conventional domestic positions such as cooking, cleaning, and caretaking.

Colonial Jews of the 17^th and 18^th centuries participated in many of the same institutions as non-Jews and wanted to feel part of colonial and American society.  Historian Jacob Rader Marcus observes that the typical Anglo-American colonial Jew “was destined to become less of a Jew and more of an American.”¹⁰   The establishment of religious institutions such as the synagogue, coupled with overseeing the public life of Jews for the purposes of death, burial, weddings, circumcision, kosher meat butchering, and distribution, meant that men would once again regain control Jewish life in the colonies.  Thirty-six  years after the arrival of the first Jews’ arrival in New Amsterdam (now New York City) in 1654, a synagogue and ensuing community was established in 1690.¹¹  After centuries of persecution and expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula, colonial Jews were concerned about religious freedom and gaining the right to naturalize.  Foreign-born Jews were granted the right to naturalize in the colonies in 1740; the fight for complete emancipation did not materialize until well into the 19th century (Maryland’s Jew Bill of 1826, for example).  Jews of this period were pragmatic and understood that their survival and success were intertwined with that of their fellow non-Jewish colonists.  The Plantation Act of 1740 allowed Jews to trade freely throughout the English colonies and create economic success for themselves and their communities.  “Jews and Gentiles rushed into the land business.  Large new colonies were organized.  Jewish capital was invited, even though Jewish settlers would never have been given full political rights.”¹² In the 18^th century, Jews focused on securing religious and civil freedoms—their quest for political and greater civic freedom would later define the 19^th century.  

The Glasse is Half Full: Preserving Judeo-Spanish Heritage and the Art of Cookery

American cuisine in the post-colonial era was defined broadly as a rejection of British culture (and eventually of French food culture as well) and an embrace of dishes that promoted American values—honesty, simplicity, virtue, and humility.¹³  Nonetheless, the first printed American cookbooks, such as Amelia Simmon’s American Cookery, were highly influenced by British food norms and sought to create an American identity and culture that unified the newly formed country and created a national identity. British and Spaniard émigrés in the 18^th and 19^th centuries retained a unique culture and identity that could be tied to their geographical homeland while American colonists shared a different sense of history and unity among the thirteen original colonies.  Cookbooks proved to be one way to create and diffuse a distinctly American culture, especially after the Revolutionary War.  For example, corn, often seen as a staple of the American diet, first makes an appearance in Amelia Simmon’s American Cookery, considered the first American cookbook, in a recipe called “Johny-Cake or Hoe-cake” where she uses Indian meal (cornmeal).¹⁴  While Simmons is not the originator of this recipe, her cookbook is the first to give it a distinctive American name—Johny Cake.  Another standout of this period is Hannah Glasse’s British classic—”the best-selling English cookbook of the eighteenth century,”—The Art of Cookery, first published in the U.S. in 1805.¹⁵  While Hannah Glasse wrote her textbook from her home in the UK, she set out to write a cookery text for a broad audience, shunning the extravagance of elite British and French cooking and privileging the vernacular over the formal.  To her readers, she states that it is “my intention is to instruct the lower sort, and therefore must treat them in their own way.”¹⁶  Her intentional appeal to the masses illuminates Glasse’s relaxed writing style and explains her text’s unusually long and descriptive recipe titles—she was writing in plain language, for the inexperienced homemaker, in hopes to give them confidence in the kitchen.

First published in London in 1747, the Art of Cookery featured five recipes attributed to the Jews: To Stew Green Peas the Jew Way; Haddocks the Jew Way; Marmalade of Eggs the Jew Way; The Jews Way to Pickle Beef, which will go suitable to the West Indies, and keep a Year Good in the Pickle, and with Care will go to the East Indies; The Jews Way of Preserving Salmon, and all Sorts of Fish; and English Jews Pudding; an excellent dish for six or seven people, for the expense of sixpence.  The latter appeared throughout multiple editions of The Art of Cookery but was omitted from the 1805 American edition, perhaps because it drew attention to English cookery.  In addition, the revised edition included recipes such as Cranberry Tarts (138) and Maple Molasse (140)—dishes with an American audience in mind.  The editor of the 2015 facsimilar edition summarized the cookbook as:

” [r]evised and republished many times since its 1747 debut; it was a bestseller in England and the United States for over 100 years.  Author Hannah Glasse dismissed French cookery as fussy and expensive, focusing instead on standards of Anglo-American cuisine.  Simple dishes, from soups to cakes, feature straightforward directions.” ¹⁷  

While the first American edition was produced in 1805, some earlier editions were circulated in North America as early as 1770, if not earlier.  Food historian Sandra Oliver argues that “many of her recipes were copied, sometimes slightly paraphrased, into handwritten recipe books brought to and used in the colonies.  A number of them survive in historical collections.”¹⁸  In addition, in “Holiday Cooking with Hannah Glasse,” Erin Rushing writes that James Smithson, founder of the Smithsonian Institute, donated his 124 private book collection to the Institute upon his death, which included an original copy of Glasse’s 1770 edition of The Art of Cookery.  It is estimated that over twenty editions were produced from 1747 until 1805, well after Glasse’s death in 1770.  An American edition wasn’t published until 1805, however, Smithson’s copy is evidence that the cookbook was available to American consumers and was considered an excellent cookery resource.¹⁹  

Widely considered “the first cookbook to become an institution,” The Art of Cookery featured classic British fare such as Cheshire Pork Pye (106) or Yorkshire Pudding (101) and was unique for its time, featuring recipes from the West Indies and American colonies, like “To Make a Currey the Indian Way (74),” and “To Make a Pellow [Pilau]the Indian Way (75),” as well as Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Jewish recipes.²⁰  Sandra Sherman writes that Glasse’s Curry recipe was the first to appear in a Western cookbook.²¹   In addition, Glasse’s chapter “For Captains of Ships,” indicated her knowledge and sensitivity to cross-cultural foods, as well as a concern for preserving foodstuffs for long transatlantic voyages, the sort that Portuguese, Spanish, and Sephardic merchants would have engaged in.  Glasse mentioned the East and West Indies in several of her recipes.  However, at the time her cookbooks were published, some speculated that many of her recipes were plagiarized or heavily borrowed from other cooks and authors.  For example, British cookbook author Ann Cook publicly accused Hannah Glasse of plagiarizing some recipes, even though the first edition of the Art of Cookery was published before Cook’s Professed Cookery (1754).  In her text, Cook wrote a note to readers and published “An Essay Lady’s Art of Cookery,” a direct attack on Glasse, her cookery skills, and recipe creation.²²  Mrs. Glasse gave few attributions for many of the recipes she included, especially those she claimed were of Jewish origin, and it isn’t easy to assess how Mrs. Glasse differentiated between a Spanish and Jewish recipe.  In the 18^th century, it was common for cookbook authors such as Mrs. Glasse, who was not a trained chef, to borrow and reproduce recipes.  Women authors were looked upon with skepticism, and a false rumor was spread that a respected physician, Dr. Hill, was the actual author of the Art of Cookery—a lie later debunked that nonetheless persisted for decades and tarnished Mrs. Glasse’s reputation.²³   However, French cookery expert Anne Willan wrote that Glasse differentiated herself from many authors of the century by “experiment[ing] with recipes rather than just copying them, untested, from another book,” which seems to have been the norm at the time.²⁴  I believe a generous interpretation of Glasse’s motives is warranted, as journalist Henry Notaker explained that many of the earliest cookbooks were family cookbooks that had been annotated and updated by different generations of women, seeking out recipes from friends and family without giving attribution to a single author or person.  While there isn’t much information on how Glasse assembled her recipes and who from, there is little reason to believe that Glasse was singularly opportunistic at the time she published her cookbooks.²⁵  In addition, a bankruptcy in 1754 forced her to sell the copyright of her cookbook, and there is no evidence that revised editions of The Art of Cookery featured additional content or anything but her original recipes.  As revealed in Culinary Biographies, “the book lived on its reputation, but was constantly changed.”²⁶  As Anne Wellan clarified, the practice of “borrowing” recipes and reproducing them was so common that copyright laws were not invoked to protect cookbook writers.  The Art of Cookery was initially published anonymously by “a Lady,” and changed to H. Glasse in later editions to mask the author’s gender.  It wasn’t until after Hannah Glasse’s death that her gender and authorship were revealed.  This practice wasn’t unusual, as women were often not considered reliable authorities in professional cookery.²⁷  Notwithstanding these controversies, The Art of Cookery was credited with presenting the first print Jewish recipes in an American cookbook to a general audience.²⁸

In the 1747 British edition’s Appendix section (where many of the Jewish, Portuguese, and Spanish recipes appear), there are two versions of a haddock recipe—one “dressed” the Spanish way and the other the Jewish way (265).  In the Spanish version, the fish is broiled and seasoned with salt and pepper, cloves, nutmeg, mace, some garlic, apples, and a touch of vinegar—stewed over a fire for thirty minutes.  In the Jewish version, Mrs. Glasse specified the use of “two haddocks,” generously cooked in oil or butter with onions and the addition of parsley.  A sauce is made with cooking water, salt and pepper, mace, the beaten yolks of two eggs, and the juice of one lemon (265).” The differences between the two recipes are the use of parsley, eggs, and lemon juice, but alone, they are not definitive markers of Jewishness.  The more notable reference to the Judeo-Spanish kitchen in Glasse’s recipe is the egg and lemon juice sauce, known in Spanish and Sephardic cooking as Agristada.   Gil Marks defined Agristada as “a thick, lemony, egg-based sauce served over vegetables and fish used to thicken soups and stews” and especially popular among the Sephardim before their expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula.²⁹  The sauce uses the cooking liquid from vegetables, meat, or fish and is a replacement for dairy in many dishes, allowing for the observance of the Jewish dietary laws since eggs are parve (meaning neutral, they can be served with both a meat or dairy meal) and can be served with fish, dairy, and meat.  Sephardic food expert Claudia Roden describes Agristada as a “sharp, refreshing sauce,” and “one of the cornerstones of Sephardi cooking.  It is generally known in Greek and Turkish cuisine, but it appears in old Judeo-Spanish and Portuguese recipes.”³⁰  This cooking method, also called Sephardic Egg-Lemon Sauce by Marks, was later found in Lady Montefiore’s 1846 The Jewish Manual, the first English language Jewish cookbook, and included a similar preparation.

Egg Sauce:  A Fine White Sauce For Boiled Chickens, Turkeys, or White Fricassees.

Beat up the yolks of four eggs with the juice of a fine lemon, a tea-spoonful of flour, and a little cold water, mix well together, and set it on the fire to thicken, stirring it to prevent curdling.  This sauce will be found excellent, if not superior, in many cases where English cooks use melted butter.  If capers are substituted for the lemon juice, this sauce will be found excellent for boiled lamb or mutton.³¹

In her recipe, Glasse replicated the Sephardic kitchen in keeping with the principles of the Jewish dietary laws.  At different times in her cookbook she offered notes, such as “N.B. the Italians, French, Portuguese, and Spaniards have a variety of ways of dressing fish, which we have not…[f]or their soups they use no gravy, nor in their sauces, thinking it improper to mix flesh and fish;  but to make their fish soups with fish, viz. either of crawfish, lobsters, etc. taking only the juice of them.”³²  This comment stands out, as it is not standard practice to separate fish and meat in the national cuisines mentioned.  Still, it is a standard convention among the Sephardim to avoid cooking fish and meat together.³³  

Glasse used the terms Portuguese, Spaniard, and Jew interchangeably several times throughout her text, offering specifically Jewish recipes yet straying from the principles of kashrut throughout.  Jews who identified as such, especially in the 18^th and early 19^th century, would not likely have transgressed the dietary laws, especially Sephardi Jews.  It wasn’t until the Enlightenment Period of the early 19^th century gained momentum in Germany, advocating for loosening or altogether abandoning kashrut, that primarily Ashkenazi Jews publicly ate non-kosher food, such as pork and shellfish, and mixed meat and dairy.³⁴  For example, her 1805 recipe for “The Jews Way to pickle Beef, which will go good to the West Indies, and keep a Year good in the Pickle, and with Care will go to the East Indies” described a pickling technique of boiling and storing beef in vinegar, much like the Iberian Escabeche method described in Lady Montefiore’s Jewish Manual.  Glasse added “a piece of butter rolled in flour, or a little oil, in which the meat and onions ought to stew a quarter of an hour before the other ingredients are put in.” Her casual mention of butter or oil mixed with meat, prohibited by Jewish dietary law, is a transgression that many Jews of the period would not be public about.  While strict adherence to kashrut (the Jewish dietary laws) was not easy for many colonial and early American Jews, the public desecration of the dietary laws could result in the loss of critical communal privileges such as a Jewish burial, circumcision rites after the birth of a boy, or membership in a synagogue.  For example, the historical archives of Shearith Israel Congregation’s, the first synagogue established in North America, founded in 1654 according to the Spanish and Portuguese Sephardic liturgical and prayer practices, reveal in “[a] record book entry from 1752…that a Jew who has “absented himself from the synagogue or was no way a benefactor to the congregation, his corpse and those of his family may not be buried within the walls” of the Jewish cemetery unless the President gave his permission.”³⁵  In addition, while it was extremely difficult for soldiers to procure kosher meat during the Revolutionary War necessitating the consumption of non-kosher food, congregational rabbis would regularly shame parishioners and their families for transgressing the dietary laws or failing to maintain regular synagogue attendance.  Historian Shari Rabin points out that a Jewish burial could be denied of a Jew who transgressed the Jewish dietary laws, had intermarried, or who was “disassociated” from the Jewish community.³⁶  

Glasse’s text may echo the eating habits of Portuguese and Spanish merchants of the 17^th and 18^th centuries, who likely included Catholics, both old and new to the faith, and were adept at keeping their religious identities private.  Iberian Jewish refugees and recent converts may have included pork and shellfish in their diets and liberally mixed meat and dairy to avoid charges of “Judaizing”.  As an institution, the Spanish Inquisition only had jurisdiction over Christians.  After the pogroms of 1391, Jews faced terrible persecution and death, and many chose conversion to Catholicism to avoid further harm.  However, some Jews continued to practice their faith privately and accusations of “Judaizing” could be leveled and prosecuted against these “new Christians.”  Food practices were often used as evidence and testimony during the Inquisition and remain our best records and source for what Spanish Jews ate during this period.  These same food practices can help us understand how Sephardic identity and food culture was preserved and transmitted both in time and place, after Jews were exiled from the Iberian peninsula and permanently displaced in the diaspora.  By 1520, many Portuguese New Christians settled in London and, as historian of Sephardic history Todd Engelman describes, “lived as Portuguese rather than Jewish merchants.”³⁷  By 1609 however, all Portuguese merchants had left London due to internal community strife and accusations of “Judaizing” .  A more stable and permanent Sephardic community was established in London in the 1630s with the arrival of Spanish and Portuguese converso merchants (Jews who converted to Catholicism in the 15^th and 16^th centuries and their descendants).  By the end of the 17^th century, roughly 500 Jews lived in London, mostly of Sephardic descent and belonging to the merchant class.  Many in London’s fledgling Jewish community, conversos and Crypto-Jews (those who secretly practiced Judaism after conversion) alike, had never experienced segregation in their homelands since they had lived as Christians.  They sought to integrate their identities in Britain, adopted English as their spoken commercial language, modernized their dress styles to assimilate, and joined British social and cultural institutions.  As a result, the foodways of these merchant groups were likely a blend of Portuguese and Spanish styles and those of their newly adopted nation.³⁸  

Given that the Spanish Inquisition lasted until 1834, when it was formally abolished, it is impossible to measure the full breadth of its impact on Sephardic and Crypto-Jewish communities.  Historical geographer Yda Schreuder argues that Portuguese merchants in the late 16^th and 17^th centuries, including New and Old Christians, Crypto and Sephardic Jews, regularly operated out of the major ports of Portugal and the Netherlands, as well as their colonies such as Lisbon, São Paolo, Recife, Antwerp, or Amsterdam where they were given special privileges and protections.³⁹  There seems to be much overlap between these groups, and it is unlikely that Mrs. Glasse would have personally understood how their foodways had evolved or differed over time.  It is almost certain, however, that Jews would not have mixed meat and dairy, especially not publicly, and would not have shared a recipe if they did so.  Crypto Jews or Spanish and Portuguese merchants who no longer identified as Jewish would have abandoned the Jewish food laws, and their foodways would have twinned those of secular Iberian society.  

Conclusion

Food historian James McWilliams explained that the colonial and subsequent federal and revolutionary periods were best understood by the competing food cultures of the nation’s many settler groups, their interactions with one another and their environment, and the opportunities for trade and commerce that shaped and disrupted U.S. foodways.  By the late 18^th century, Jewish colonists were highly dependent on the collective memory of their families and ancestors, and what Jonathan Sarna, professor of Jewish history, called “a combination of intuition and expedience” to perform religious rituals and commemorate holidays, such as the weekly observance of the Sabbath and the foods that accompany its celebration.⁴⁰

Glasse’s The Art of Cooking invites readers to examine how British norms and culture influenced cookbook writing in the American colonies, especially by normalizing the inclusion of Judeo-Spanish recipes and Spanish and Portuguese ingredients.  The Portuguese colonies became a haven for recent conversos, seeking refuge from Inquisition authorities, and Judeo-Spanish merchants became personified with long-distance trade, especially as they established strong merchant networks in European port cities, such as Amsterdam and counterparts in colonial colonies of Curaçao, Suriname, Barbados, and Jamaica.  

As the first cookbook to include Jewish recipes in an English-language text, Glasse privileged the Judeo-Spanish kitchen by referencing recipes that could be traced back to Medieval Spain and were explicit markers of Jewishness in Spanish Inquisition records.  The survival, and eventual written record, of these dishes can be mapped to the expulsion and migration of the Sephardim and strength of the oral tradition among women, notably on two transatlantic coasts.  

Glasse’s text also provides information on how Jewish foodways were perceived and understood by others and how Jewish food identity was transmitted across cultural and national boundaries.  Her cookbook is evidence that the foodways of the Sephardim, first recorded and identified in Spanish Inquisition records—and uniquely attributed to the Jews—survived for centuries without written records in the multiple communities where the Judeo-Spanish migrated.  While Glasse’s text may not clarify what Spanish or Portuguese Jews of the 18^th century actually ate, its treatment of Jews as a discrete category, separate or different from the majority culture, provides insight about how differences were valued and often negotiated in the kitchen.  Where Glasse claimed fish dressed the “Jewish” way included parsley and a lemon-egg sauce, her recipe for salt fish is one she did not identify with the Jews.  A century later, Lady Judith Montefiore recognized salt fish as one of the many ways to cook fish in The Jewish Manual and a similar recipe appeared in Sarah Hale’s Mrs. Hale’s New Cook Book (Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson, 1857).  As one of only two dedicated Jewish recipes in her cookbook, Sarah Hale described the preparation of this dish: “[a]s in the Hebrew fashion, slice the salmon, and cover it with salt for 2 hours; then dry it, and brush it over with yolk of eggs.”⁴¹  By the end of the 19^th century, several Judeo-Spanish dishes, rooted in the flavors and cooking techniques of the Iberian tradition, became integrated into U.S. foodways, divorced from their origins in the Jewish Spanish and Portuguese kitchen, obscuring their significance to Jewish American identity and culinary history. 

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1. Isaac Jack Lévy and Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt, Ritual Medical Lore of Sephardic Women (Urbana:  University of Illinois, 2002), 1. During their interviews with Sephardic women, Rachel (last name not given), states that “boys in the cheder (Hebrew School) could learn the words and forget them, but in this domestic religion, you could never get rid of it…When it goes in this way…, Jewish comes up in you from the roots, and it stays with you all your life (23).” Lévy and Zumwalt describe Sephardic healers as “the keepers of Sephardic health and home (26)” and use the term “centerwomen” to describe “Women who initiate and sustain informal and social networks, and who are often the keystones of family and kinship (26).”  In addition, they stress that older women, in particular, were highly regarded and respected and referred to as muestras madres (our mothers, 28). ↩︎
2. For a comprehensive treatise on female crypto-Jewish life in the Iberian Peninsula, see Renée Levine Melammed’s Heretics or Daughters of Israel: The Crypto Jewish Women of Castile (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), in particular Chapter 2, 31-44. ↩︎
3. Christina Galasso, “Religious Space, Gender, and Power in the Sephardi Diaspora:  The Return to Judaism of New Christian Men and Women in Livorno and Pisa,” in Sephardi Family Life in the Early Modern Diaspora, ed. Julia R. Lieberman (Waltham:  Brandeis University Press, 2011), 102. ↩︎
4. The poem Eshet Chayil (Proverbs 31:10-31) is traditionally sung at the beginning of the Sabbath, Friday evenings, by a Jewish woman’s husband as a testament to her essential role as a housewife and mother.  The title, “capable wife”, is an ode of praise and admiration, extolling the virtues of the perfect Jewish mother—a queen or priestess of the home. ↩︎
5. Galasso, 102. ↩︎
6. Lady Judith Cohen Montefiore, The Jewish Manual, The Jewish Manual, or Practical information in Jewish and modern cookery: with a collection of valuable recipes & hints relating to the toilette / edited by a lady.  London, UK, 1846. ↩︎
7. Hélène Jawhara Piñer, Jews, Food, and Spain: The Oldest Medieval Spanish Cookbook and the Sephardic Culinary Heritage, (Academic Studies Press, 2022), 177. ↩︎
8. Galasso, 102. ↩︎
9. Galasso, 109. ↩︎
10. Jacob Rader Marcus, The American Jew: 1585-1990, A History, (Brooklyn:  Carson Publishing, 1995), 41. ↩︎
11. In American Jewry:  Documents, Eighteenth Century, (Cincinnati:  Hebrew Union College Press, 1959), Jacob Rader Marcus writes that following suit, Jewish enclaves assembled in Newport, RI, Philadelphia, Charlestown (Charleston), Savannah, and Montreal, where “Jews had full civil rights…settled where they wished…[and were] permitted to trade openly in all of England’s colonies.”, 20. ↩︎
12. Marcus, The American Jew, 22-23.  ↩︎
13. McWilliams, Revolution at The Table, 309. ↩︎
14. Amelia Simmons, American Cookery, (Hartford: Hudson and Goodwin, 1796), 34. ↩︎
15. Gil Marks, 139. ↩︎
16. Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery (New York:  Dover Editions, 2015, facsimile of 1805 edition, 3). Multiple editions of this book exist and are used in this chapter.  The edition will be noted when possible to highlight changes over time. ↩︎
17. Hannah Glasse, (1805). ↩︎
18. Oliver, Sandra.  Food in Colonial and Federal America, (Greenwood Press: Greenport, CT, 2005), 1. ↩︎
19. Erin Rushing, Holiday Cooking with Hannah Glasse, Unbound, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, December 14, 2021, Oliver, Sandra.  Food in Colonial and Federal America.  Greenwood Press: Greenport, CT, 2005. ↩︎
20. Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery (London:  Wangford and Sons, 1747), https://archive.org/details/TheArtOfCookery/page/n339/mode/2up?q=portuguese.  ↩︎
21. Sandra Sherman, “Hannah Glasse,” in Alice Arndt ed., Culinary Biographies, (Houston: YES Press, 2006), 180-181. ↩︎
22. See Clarissa F. Dillon and Deborah J. Peterson, A Cook’s Perspective, Haverton: Brookline Books, 2023) for Cook’s original text and Dillon and Peterson’s analysis of the accusation. ↩︎
23. For more, see Culinary Biographies 180-181; and Sandra Oliver’s Food in Colonial and Federal America, Westport:  Greenwood Press, 2005, 1-3. ↩︎
24. Anne Whelan, Great Cooks and Their Recipes:  From Taillevent to Escoffier (New York:  McGraw Hill, 1992), 100. ↩︎
25. Henry Notaker, A History of Cookbooks (Los Angeles:  University of California Press, 2017), 45. ↩︎
26. Arndt, 181. ↩︎
27. See Alice McLean, Aesthetic Pleasure in 20th-Century Women’s Food Writing (2013) for commentary on the gendered divide between food writing addressed to professionals and food writing oriented towards home cooking. ↩︎
28. A 11/23 archival visit to the University of Michigan as the Heid Special Research Fellow gave me access to many of the earliest American and Jewish cookbooks.  Hannah Glasse is attributed with authoring the first Jewish recipe in a print cookbook.  Eliza Acton’s Modern Cookery in All its Branches (Philadelphia:  Lea and Blanchard, 1845), published several decades after The Art of Cookery and revised from its British version for American audiences, features a single “Hebrew” dish. ↩︎
29. Marks, 5. ↩︎
30. Claudia Roden, The Book of Middle Eastern Food, (New York: Knopf, 1972), 247. ↩︎
31. Lady Montefiore, The Jewish Manual (London:  Meldola, Kahn, & co, 1846). ↩︎
32. Glasse, 1805, 232. ↩︎
33. In Gastrosimbologia, Javier Zafra (Caminos de Sefarad: Red de Juderias de España, 2024) states that “Jewish stews never mix meat with fish in the same pot; It is not a precept but a custom of Sephardic cuisine.” 185. ↩︎
34. For more, see W. Gunther Plaut’s The Rise of Reform Judaism: A Sourcebook of Its European Origins, London:  The World Union for Progressive Judaism, 1969).  See also Linda Mack Schloff’s “And Prairie Dogs Weren’t Kosher:” Jewish Women in the Upper Midwest Since 1855, St. Paul:  Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1996; Ellen F. Steinberg and Jack H. Prost’s From the Jewish Heartland:  Two Centuries of Midwest Foodways, Urbana:  University of Illinois Press, 2011; Shari Babin’s Jews on the Frontier (2017); and Food and Judaism, edited by Leonard J. Greenspon, Ronald A. Simkins, and Gerald Shapiro. ↩︎
35. Center for Jewish History, Congregation Shearith Israel, Records, Undated, 1777-1996 (Congregation Shearith Israel (New York:  NY), accessed February 8, 2024  https://search.cjh.org/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=cjh_aspacearchivesspace%2F%2Frepositories%2F3%2Fresources%2F5650&context=L&vid=beta&search_scope=CJH_SCOPE&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=default_tab&query=any,contains,Sephardic%20cookbook&offset=0. ↩︎
36. Shari Rabin, Jews on the Frontier (New York:  New York University Press, 2017), 17. ↩︎
37. Todd Engelman, “The Jews of Great Britain (1650–1815),” in Karp J. Sutcliffe A, eds, The Cambridge History of Judaism, (Cambridge University Press; 2017), 949. ↩︎
38. Engelman, 954-957. ↩︎
39. Yda Shreuder, Amsterdam’s Sephardic Merchants and the Atlantic Sugar Trade in the Seventeenth Century (Cham:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 5. ↩︎
40. Jonathan Sarna, American Judaism, (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 2004), 23. ↩︎
41. Sarah Hale’s, Mrs. Hale’s New Cook Book (Philadelphia:  T.B. Peterson, 1857), 84. ↩︎

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Biography

Nathalie Ross holds a PhD in American History from University of North Texas. Her research focuses on Jewish history, food studies, and the Sephardic diaspora. She has presented public and scholarly lectures on the cultural significance of Sephardic cuisine and the intersection of U.S and Jewish national identity, gender, migration, and race. Her writing has appeared in Prism, La Djente, and http://www.exploringjudaism.com.