by Gil Marks
A depiction of a rooster on the sixth century BCE onyx seal of Jaazaniah (right; the impression of the seal is on the left). It is among the earliest representations of a chicken.
The reason for the chicken's initial sudden popularity about twenty-five hundred years ago and its successive spread throughout the Persian, Greek, and Roman empires had little to do with the tastiness or utility of its flesh or its prolific egg laying, but rather with the aggressive rooster's ability to fight. Cock-fighting was among man's earliest entertainments and forms of gambling. Jewish law forbade the practice of cockfighting, not to mention gambling, and the practice never caught on among Jews. In many cultures of the ancient world, especially Rome, chickens were also used for auguries and sacrifices in temples and in folk medicine. Few people in ancient times ate chicken, unless it had lost in the cockfight or the hen had passed its egg-laying days.
The first depiction of the chicken in Israel was a seventh century BCE red jasper seal with the inscription "Jehoahaz, son of the king" above the image of a rooster. This motif occurred again on a small round seal stamped with the Hebrew for "Jaazaniah, the Servant of the King" and decorated with the image of a rooster in fighting stance. The artifact, found at Tel Mizpah (8 miles north of Jerusalem, near Ramallah), probably dates from the time of Gedaliah, who in 586 BCE, after the destruction of Jerusalem, was appointed governor of Judah by the Babylonians and, according to the biblical account, made his capital at Mizpah (a name meaning "lookout/watchtower"), along with an officer named Jaazaniah. The images were most certainly intended to emphasize his ferocity. (Chickens did not become associated with cowardice until much later.) This does not mean that the domestic chicken had actually reached Israel at this point, just that important officials inscribed their seals with it. It is also possible that for many centuries roosters had been in Israel and Egypt, but only as an exotic showcase indulgence of monarchs; they may have been sent as a diplomatic gift from a Mesopotamian king, but they were certainly not widespread among the populace. Chickens only became prevalent in Israel around the second century BCE; they were subsequently called in Hebrew tarnegol, from the Sumerian tarlugal/darlugallu (king's bird).
The Romans, though, loved the taste of chicken and, of course, its fighting ability, and introduced it throughout their domains, where it very gradually supplanted the pigeon. During the Roman period, chicken emerged as a prominent feature of Jewish cooking, the Talmud considering it "the choicest of birds." (This is one of the many disagreements with the Karaites, who hold that chickens and their eggs are not kosher.) In the Talmud, the chicken egg (beitzah), which is larger and more useful in cooking that of the less prolific pigeon, is referred to as a basic unit of volume measurement.
Nevertheless, the Sages, at the time of the Second Temple, instituted a regulation that no chickens could be raised in Jerusalem or by Kohanim, as they were quite messy and tended to wander into places they were not wanted. Throughout most of history, anyone in poultry production faced the problem that birds living in large flocks tend to contract and spread various diseases, wiping out most of or all the animals. Therefore, individual farmers tended to raise chickens in small groups of generally fifteen to thirty or, for a major producer, perhaps risk a large flock of two hundred birds. Consequently, chickens were always relatively rare and rather expensive. The French king, Henry IV, on the occasion of his coronation in 1589, famously declared, "I want there to be no peasant in my realm so poor that he will not have a chicken in his pot every Sunday." Although typical of a politician's bluster in any age, his declaration of the prevalence of chickens was a pipe dream in the sixteenth century.
Until well into the twentieth century, because of the chicken's expense and inaccessibility, many urban Europeans and Americans rarely, if ever, ate chicken. Among Sephardim and Mizrachim throughout the medieval and much of the modern periods, chicken, more expensive then beef or lamb, remained a popular but rare treat.
In Europe, chickens practically disappeared following the fall of Rome, except for their limited use in cockfighting, and only began to make a comeback with the revival of European cuisine and agronomy that followed the First Crusade. It was only in the face of a meat shortage in Europe in the fifteenth century that the widespread raising of chickens flourished, although Ashkenazim in western and central Europe favored geese and beef. A seventeenth century German rabbi wistfully noted that "chicken does not awaken the joy of the festival as does beef."
A different mentality emerged in eastern Europe in the fifteenth century, where beef and geese were always less common than in the west. Among eastern Ashkenazim, chicken served as the most important food animal and many Jewish families, urban as well as rural, kept at least a few hens, frequently along with a goose or two, in their yards or in coops. Even then, only the wealthy or those who raised chickens ate them. For much of the year, the birds fended for themselves through foraging and generally required little attention, care, or expense.
The Yiddish word for chicken, hindel (also hendel), was also a woman's name. Since most eastern Ashkenazim ate only a single species of bird, in Eastern Yiddish the generic Hebrew word for a kosher or nonkosher fowl, oafot (oyfes, oyf singular, in Yiddish), became a narrower synonym for chicken, an application that transferred to modern Hebrew as well. Even so, for the majority of eastern Ashkenazim, chicken was a luxury reserved for the Sabbath or, for those with less access, only special occasions. The hen's primary role was laying eggs, a major source of protein or added income. Hens were generally kept until their egg-laying days had passed. In the words of author Bernard Malamud, the child of Russian Jewish immigrants who spent his childhood in Brooklyn during the Depression, "We didn't starve, but we didn't eat chicken unless we were sick, or the chicken was." The housewife would defeather, kasher, and cook the chicken in honor of the Sabbath. Experienced housewives knew that as the newly slaughtered chicken cooled, the feathers would become harder to remove, so they would begin plucking as soon as possible. However, the chicken could not be subjected to heat before it was soaked and salted to remove the blood, so the feathers could only be plucked using cold water. To kasher the chicken, the housewives soaked it in cold water for thirty minutes, covered it on all sides with kosher salt, set it to drain on an inclining surface for an hour, then washed it in cold water three times to get rid of the salt and blood.
Among Ashkenazim, no part of the bird was wasted. The feet (hun fus) replete with nails, along with the head, neck (helzel), wing tips (wings are called fliegel), and gizzards (pupiks), went into the soup pot with onions and some root vegetables to be transformed into a rich broth or braised with onions to make a fricassee. The fat was rendered into schmaltz; the skin was cooked to make gribenes (cracklings). The liver was grilled, chopped with a little schmaltz and hard-boiled eggs, and used to fill doughs to make knishes and kreplach, mixed into a kugel, or simply spread over bread and sprinkled with some grated black radish. The neck skin was filled with bread crumbs or flour (helzel) and roasted or cooked in the cholent (Sabbath stew). The carcass served as the main course for Sabbath or holiday meals. The feathers became stuffing for pillows, mattresses, and quilts. Under extremely desperate circumstances, which too frequently befell eastern Europena Jews after the seventeen century, even the bones were ground up, fried, and eaten.
Various communities developed chicken dishes that could slow-cook for a long time, providing a warm and flavorful meal on Friday night. Since few homes had an oven, many of these dishes were cooked in a liquid over a fire or charcoal. Hungarians prefer chicken paprikash. Some Greek and Turkish Sephardim prepare gayina con tomat (chicken with tomato sauce) or gayina con vinagreta (chicken with vinegar sauce). Syrians feature dajaaj al riz (chicken with rice), in which pieces of roasted chicken are buried in cooked rice for a long, slow baking, or a variation with potatoes, pasta, or eggplant. In Calcutta, the favorite for Friday night is murgi (chicken stew). Ethiopians frequently prepare a chicken wot for the Sabbath. Yemenites use chicken in a soup or st
ew. Persians frequently make a slow-cooked morgh e tu pur (chicken in the pot). Georgians have kotmis (pot—roasted stuffed chicken in pomegranate juice) or chakhokhbili (chicken fricassee), while for Sabbath lunch they enjoy satsivi (cold poached chicken in walnut sauce). Italians make a chicken hamin for Sabbath lunch.
In Jewish tradition, chickens are the epitome of procreation and prolificacy, the Talmud declaring, "Be fruitful and multiply like chickens." Consequently, they are ubiquitous at Jewish weddings. Ashkenazim traditionally serve chicken soup and roast chicken. Persians add chicken to a sweetened rice polow. Moroccans might offer chicken with couscous. Moroccans also feature chicken in honor of an engagement and upon entering one's new home. In Israel, chicken schnitzel and pargiyot (grilled deboned chicken thighs) are now common.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the advent of the incubator led to chickens becoming more commonplace. Still, raising chickens for meat was primarily a by-product of egg production and merely a source of economic diversity on farms or in urban households, not a pursuit unto itself. This situation dramatically changed during the twentieth century. In 1930, the U.S. Department of Agriculture developed broilers, young tender birds bred specifically for their meat. Broilers are easy and relatively inexpensive to raise and mature rapidly with little care or equipment. This new breed, along with revamped raising procedures, reduced the time required to reach market to only forty-two days. Beginning in 1956, vaccines added to chicken feed became available to prevent common poultry illnesses. This allowed producers to raise massive numbers of chickens, including three-story poultry coops, each floor housing tens of thousands of birds.
In 1938, Joseph Katz, an immigrant from Austria, realized that kosher chickens were inaccessible to the masses of Jews moving to the suburbs and rural areas far from a neighborhood kosher butcher. Whereas in Europe, almost every Jewish settlement large or small had someone qualified to slaughter chickens, in America only the larger urban areas with a sizable Jewish population hosted a shochet and the facilities to process chickens in any number. Katz founded in a garage in Liberty, New York, what would soon become one of the world's largest processors of kosher poultry, Empire.
In the 1950s, Katz took advantage of emerging innovations in freezing and vacuum wrapping to offer frozen kosher chickens to markets across the country, forever changing the nature of kosher chickens. Previously, chickens were inspected, soaked, salted, and kashered at home or, much less frequently, by butchers. Today in America, kosher chickens, requiring no further preparation beyond cooking, are readily available not only from kosher butchers, but also from most mainstream supermarkets. In blind taste tests, kosher chickens consistently score at the top and are frequently purchased by non-Jews as well.
(See also Bird, Chicken Soup, Egg, Falsche Fish, Paprikas, Pigeon, Schmaltz, Schnitzel, Tabyeet, Wot, and Yom Kippur)
Chicken Soup
Poultry has been added to stews since humans started making them. A relatively recent innovation, although dating back several thousand years, is simmering only chicken in water with a few complementary vegetables and herbs to produce a transparent, flavorful broth. Initially, the institution of chicken soup seems to have emerged for its medicinal value, a notion that became widespread in a number of diverse locales millennia before Jewish comedians of the 1960s popularized the now-common epithet for chicken soup—Jewish penicillin. Indeed, components of the soup aid in anti-inflammatory activity, while the warm liquid soothes the throat. Of course, it does not hurt that the sight and taste transports us back to childhood and the sense of security and well-being our mothers gave us.
The Babylonian Talmud mentions "the chicken of Rabbi Abba," wherein the chicken was cooked in water, then left to soak in hot water for a few days until the chicken meat dissolved. Regardless of its effectiveness as a remedy, another rabbi found this particular medicine so revolting that even the very memory of tasting it made him want to wretch. Chicken soup, on the other hand, has the exact opposite effect; it is a delicious comfort food evoking pleasant memories of childhood and nurturing.
The first record of chicken soup, as well as of its curative role, was in Huang Di Nei Jing, the classic book of traditional Chinese medicine written around the second century BCE, which includes chicken soup among the yang (warming foods) and states that the broth also serves as a base for delivering the essence of various therapeutic herbs. Drawing on his medical training, Moses Maimonides (1135—1204), the Spanish philosopher, codifier, and physician to the vizier of Egypt, recommended poultry soup for the weak and sick. Traditionally, Sephardim prepared caldo de gayina vieja (old-hen chicken broth) for anyone ill and for women who had recently given birth. From this emerged the Sephardic custom of serving soupa de gayina with rice or orzo, sometimes called soupa de kippur, at the meal preceding the fast of Yom Kippur.
Although chicken soup has been a part of the Mizrachi and Sephardic culinary repertoires since at least early medieval times, long before it entered Ashkenazic cookery, it was among Ashkenazim that chicken soup found its greatest appreciation. Indeed, chicken soup, variously called goldene yoykh, gilderne, and goldzup (the gold refers to the globules of fat floating on top of the soup), is arguably the most identifiable Ashkenazic dish in America. It is a constant in Ashkenazic culture. In Yiddish, a schlemiel is someone who spills his chicken soup, while the schlimazel is the one on whom the soup is spilled.
This soup first came to prominence in Ashkenazic circles in the fifteenth century, after the revival of chicken raising in Europe that surged in the wake of a meat shortage. Soon chicken soup with noodles became the common first course for Ashkenazic Friday evening dinners. Ever since, in many Ashkenazic households, no Friday night, holiday, or wedding meal can begin without a bowl of golden chicken soup. It is also traditional at special anniversaries, such as the twenty-fifth and fiftieth, where the floating bubbles of fat represent happiness and contentment for the couple. In twentieth-century America, chicken soup was still associated with Jewish cooking; humorist Sam Levenson referred to it as "oil on troubled waters."
Chicken soup is rather easy to make. All that it requires is the time needed to slowly simmer the bird; too high a heat results in bitterness. A good chicken soup is characterized by a rich golden color, pronounced chicken flavor, and full-bodied mouthfeel. Historically, a rich broth was created by cooking parts of the chicken—especially the feet, gizzards, neck, wings, and bones—along with a few large pieces of vegetables. Soup provided an ideal way to use a tough aging hen that was no longer capable of laying eggs; an older bird produced a much more flavorful broth. Since chicken feet are nearly impossible to procure these days, wings are added for extra flavor and body.
Most soups also contain onions, carrots, and celery, and only a few herbs, notably parsley, celery leaves, and dill. Ashkenazim distinctively add parsnips for a sweet, earthy flavor. Turnips are common in the Middle East. Some cooks use the brown onion skins to impart extra color. The soup reduces as it simmers, intensifying the flavors, so it is best to add the salt near the end of the cooking time.
In addition to enjoying chicken soup with noodles, Ashkenazim typically serve it with mandlen (soup nuts) or rice. Matza balls (knaidlach) are traditional at the Passover Seder and, more recently, at other times of the year. Any unlaid eggs (ayeleh) found in the hen, considered by the Sages to be meat, were generally poached for a few minutes or hard-boiled in the soup and served as a special addition. Romanians sometimes garnish the soup with a little ground hazelnuts.
Chicken soup with kreplach (filled pasta) is customary among eastern Ashkenazim for three meals during the year. Mystics compared the wrapping of dough with the divine envelopment of mercy and kindness demonstrated on Yom Kippur and, therefore, kreplach are featured in the soup at the meal before the fast. Hoshanah Rabbah (the seventh day of Sukkot) is regarded as the day on which the verdicts of judgment that were decided on Yom Kippur are sealed and, consequently, traditional Yom Kippur eve foods are served on this day. Besid
es a similarity in names, in kabbalistic tradition, Yom Kippur is compared with Purim; a parallel is drawn between the physical lots of Purim cast by Haman and the metaphysical lots of Yom Kippur. As a result, chicken soup with kreplach also became commonplace at many eastern European Purim feasts.
(See also Avgolemono, Gundi, and Mandlen)
Ashkenazic Chicken Soup (Goldene Yoykh)
about 2 quarts
[MEAT]
1 (4- to 5-pound) chicken, quartered, or 3 pounds chicken thighs
1 to 2 pounds chicken bones and parts, such as trimmings, frames, backs, and wings
3 quarts cold water
2 medium yellow onions, quartered
4 medium carrots, cut into 3- to 4-inch lengths
2 to 3 stalks celery, cut into 3- to 4-inch lengths
1 to 2 medium parsnips, cut into 3- to 4-inch lengths
6 sprigs fresh flat-leaf parsley
8 to 10 whole black peppercorns or about ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
