by Gil Marks
Although condemned in the seventeenth century by the church as "the beverage of Satan," chocolate's popularity continued to grow. In the early seventeenth century, chocolate drinks were already popular in the Jewish ghetto of Bayonne, St. Esprit. In 1691, French authorities banned the sale of chocolate to those outside the ghetto. Later in the eighteenth century, St. Esprit emerged as an early center of chocolate making. Subsequently, Jews have been in the forefront of chocolate manufacturing from San Francisco to Melbourne, Australia. Chocolate houses soon began appearing in the rest of Europe, where the beverage was viewed as an aphrodisiac and fatigue reliever. By 1657, chocolate houses began springing up in England, offering the beverage at a steep price.
Meanwhile, because of the Jewish familiarity with chocolate and vanilla, these items entered Jewish cuisines before most others. In the seventeenth century, professional bakers in Bayonne and Italy, many of them Jews, introduced chocolate fillings and later chocolate cakes. Hungarian housewives became fond of a chocolate filling in cake rolls, naming it kakosh, while Polish cooks later did the same in babkas. In 1832, a Jewish apprentice baker in Vienna by the name of Franz Sacher—at the time, many central European pastry bakers were Jewish—created a dense, dry chocolate cake with a thin layer of apricot jam in the middle, the famous Sachertorte. Later his son Eduard Sacher opened the Sacher Hotel, where he served and further popularized his father's famous creation.
The first eating chocolate appeared in London in 1674. This confection, however, consisted of grated chocolate paste, sugar, and plant gums, and was rather different from contemporary chocolate bars. Until 1828, chocolate was primarily consumed as a drink or in cakes. Then Conrad J. van Houten of Holland invented a method of extracting cocoa butter from the chocolate liquor (ground cocoa beans in liquid form) through a hydraulic press, leading to a revolution in the candy industry. The extruded chocolate butter enabled chocolate makers to reinforce the chocolate liquor, allowing them to produce a chocolate hard enough to form into bars and candy. In 1847, capitalizing on van Houten's innovations, the English company of Fry and Sons introduced the first "eating chocolate" recognizable to modern chocolate lovers.
In 1876, Rudolph Lindt of Switzerland discovered a process known as conching, which produced a smoother chocolate. In Europe, chocolate making became a fine art. Skill and craftsmanship went into the production, whether of simple candies or elaborate confections, with American chocolate falling well below European standards.
Van Houten's method for extracting cocoa butter from the chocolate liquor led to another by-product, cocoa powder. Cocoa powder is produced by extracting at least half of the cocoa butter from the chocolate liquor, leaving a dry cake that is ground into a powder.
In 1933, Eliyahu Fromenchenko, a Jewish chocolate maker from Russia, opened the Elite candy factory in Ramat Gan, Israel. It became the country's largest producer of chocolate.
In 1938, Stephen Klein, a Jewish master candy maker, arrived in New York City from Vienna, Austria, and began producing chocolates in the Old World style from his home kitchen. Soon he established his first Bartons Salon de Chocolat shop. By 1950, the number of shops grew to fifty. At its height, nationwide, Bartons consisted of about two hundred company-owned or franchised boutiques offering a wide range of exclusive confections as well as prepackaged items. Boxes of Bartons were also sold at retail stores across the country.
What made Bartons candies unique, besides the high quality and elegant presentation, was that they were all strictly kosher, from the Seder Mints and Almond Kisses to the chocolate Easter bunnies and Santas. At a time long before the American mainstream discovered kosher—when Jews were streaming into the middle class and acculturating, although some refused to give up their religious values—Bartons represented the emerging religious materialism and marketing potential of kosher supervision. Under Klein's direction, Bartons not only introduced the concept of gourmet candy to America, but also grew into an important part of American Jewish life. For half a century, no Hanukkah or Passover in America was complete without a box or more of Bartons chocolates, often purchased through synagogue or day-school fundraisers. As a result, every Jewish child was familiar with Bartons and many Jewish institutions relied on the extra income from its fundraisers. Jewish guests and businessmen could give or receive a box of Bartons with no embarrassment over quality or qualms about kashrut.
After Klein's death, however, his sons, occupied in real estate, sold Bartons in 1981. The new owner, American Safety Razor Company, which had also recently acquired Schrafft's Candy Company, closed most of the Bartons stores, ignored Klein's standards of quality, and neglected the synagogue fundraisers. On the verge of bankruptcy, American Safety Razor Company passed through several hands before Bartons was revived, albeit as a much smaller presence and with the loss of its former role and status in the American Jewish culture. However, by this time, American business had discovered the marketing importance of kosher and many of America's best chocolates had acquired kosher supervision.
Cholent/Schalet
Cholent is a slow-simmered stew, often based on beans, that is served hot for Sabbath lunch.
Origin: France
Other names: Alsace and southern Germany: schalet; Austria: scholet; Hungary: sholet, sólet; Lithuania: chulent; Poland: cholent, tsholnt.
In the eleventh century, as Christians gradually conquered Spain, the scientific knowledge and culinary techniques of the Moors from Toledo and other Spanish intellectual centers increasingly flowed into Provence and from there transformed the rest of Europe. These ideas and methods were largely transmitted through Jewish translators. Sometime after the First Crusade, around the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, the Sephardic Sabbath stew, hamin/adafina, probably traveling by way of Provence, eventually reached the Jews of France to become an indelible part of their Sabbath. Certain medieval French bishops, distressed at the good relations between Christians and Jews in their region, issued a series of edicts forbidding various practices, including eating long-simmered bean stews. From France, the stew moved eastward to southern Germany and later to eastern Europe.
Among the French Ashkenazim, the stew received a new name, spelled schalet in Western Yiddish and tsholnt in Eastern Yiddish, probably from the Old French word for warm, chald/chalt (chaud in modern French), or, some contend, from chald-de-lit (warmth of the bed). Alternatively, some insist that the dish flowed to France directly from Spain, the name emerging from the Spanish escallento (warm). The widespread modern American notion that the name of the stew derived from the Yiddish shul ende, reflecting the time of day when the dish was eaten, is obviously mistaken, as the name emerged in France among French speakers before the development of Old Yiddish (c. 1250).
For generations, the family's cholent pot was carried to the baker's oven (here in Bialystok, Poland, 1931) on Friday to cook overnight for Sabbath lunch.
The first known use of the term tsholnt was in the Or Zarua (Light Is Sown), written by Rabbi Isaac ben Moses of Vienna (c. 1200—1260), who was raised in Bohemia and went to Paris in 1217 to study under Rabbi Judah ben Isaac Messer Leon, one of the Tosafot. By this time, the stew had already become commonplace in Bohemia and southern Germany. The Or Zarua describes the way the stew was cooked at the home of Messer Leon: "I saw in the home of my teacher that sometimes their tsholnt which was covered, was cooling on the Sabbath close to the time of eating the food, the [non-Jewish] servants lit fires close to the pots, in order that they should be heated or moved them closer to the fire." At this point, the French rabbis permitted the cooking of the Sabbath stew on the home hearth and allowed non-Jews to adjust the heat on the Sabbath according to the need of the dish, practices the authorities farther east in Germany forbade. As a consequence, German rabbis required the stew pots to be sealed in an oven or cooked over a nonadjustable heat source (i.e., a thin sheet of metal). According to Jewish law, cholent should be at least half-cooked before the Sabbath begins; then it was usually left at a low heat to co
ok overnight. Since in Europe few private homes had an oven, particularly one large enough to maintain its heat overnight, cholent was typically left in the stone oven of the town bakery or in a large private oven.
On Friday afternoons in the large urban centers and villages of Europe, after the last loaves of fragrant golden challah were pulled from the stone ovens and put aside to cool, housewives or children would haul the family's blackened cholent pot to the bakery. The women took the opportunity to socialize before heading home to continue their weekly preparations for the Sabbath. The lids of the pots were traditionally sealed with a flour paste, preventing the contents from drying out while safeguarding that nothing untoward could make its way inside. When all the pots were assembled, the oven door would be sealed with clay where the entire collection would remain undisturbed overnight. Although the fire would eventually go out, the heat would abide well into the following day, slowly cooking the stews inside and melding the various flavors. Late on Saturday morning, following synagogue services, the oven would be unsealed and the pots eagerly reclaimed by their owners or representatives. The treasure was hurried home and placed in the center of the Sabbath table or insulated in the bed under down quilts until the appropriate time. When the seal on the pot was broken, a unique yet familiar aroma would waft through the house, setting mouths to watering as the diners anticipated the first bite. The potatoes had turned a translucent golden brown and the cooking liquid had become rich and viscous from the gelatinous meat and bones.
Ashkenazim tweaked cholent to more readily fit their environment and tastes. The only known ingredient of the early French cholents was fava beans, although it can be assumed they also contained meat, some sort of grain, and a Jewish standard, onions. However, the arrival of the more versatile dried haricot beans from America in the sixteenth century quickly led to their substitution for fava beans. White beans, red kidneys, pintos, and dried limas, closely resembling the former fava bean, are the most common. Most cooks use a combination and some American Jewish companies began selling a commercial "cholent mix." Some Romanians add chickpeas, a remnant of Sephardic influence due to the Ottoman control of the area.
Since the French grew bread wheat rather than the firmer durum wheat, and rice was quite rare, some substituting was necessary for the grain component. An early surrogate may have been spelt (dinkel in German) or the roasted immature spelt kernels (gruenkern), which are still used in German Sabbath soups. Barley became the standard grain in eastern Europe.
The usual meat of choice is beef, such as flanken and brisket, which benefits from the long slow-cooking. The amount of meat largely depended on the tastes of the community and economic condition of the household. In western and central Europe, goose and occasionally duck were also added. Some poor eastern European families used chicken, as it was much cheaper than beef. Other poor families might simply add a bone or two. Today, vegetarian cholents are in vogue in some circles.
In the mid-nineteenth century, Polish cholents always featured plenty of bulbes (potatoes), while most Hungarians would never allow one near their cholent. Germans tend to add various root vegetables. Some cooks fry the onions in schmaltz, while others add them raw to the pot. The stew may be sweetened with honey, caramelized sugar, or fruit, or spiced with cloves or paprika and a bay leaf. The old Jewish favorite, garlic, is found in many variations.
A cholent may be dry or watery, but most fall somewhere in between. Hungarian cholent leans toward the soupy side, while Polish and German cholents tend to be thicker. Some add a little semolina to thicken it. Actually, cholent never comes out the exact same way twice in a row. Consequently, sometimes the amount of moisture is the result of a mistake rather than intent. Thus when Ashkenazim began cooking cholents in home ovens, more than a few anxious housewives kept an eye peeled on the level of the cooking liquid, even in the middle of the night. If it fell below an acceptable amount and the heat source was covered by a piece of metal, they removed the pot from the direct heat and added a ladle of water kept very hot. Today, slow cookers are often used. Although cholent can be served as a meal in itself, it is commonly accompanied with a kugel, dill pickles or cucumber salad, and sometimes coleslaw or pickled beets.
Today among Alsatian Jews, schalet competes with another hot dish for Sabbath lunch, choucroute garnie, consisting of cured meats, sausages, and sauerkraut. On the other hand, some non-Jewish Alsatians cook a stew overnight on Saturday to serve after Sunday mass, a dish they call schalet. Although the French are loath to admit it, the classic southern French dish cassoulet is most certainly a descendant of the Jewish schalet, as the injunction of those medieval French bishops against eating slow-cooked bean stews was largely ignored. Similarly, the related Hungarian sholet/sólet has been widely adopted by non-Jews, practically becoming a national dish of Hungary. The common denominator remains the slow-simmered beans.
People are not nonchalant about cholent—they seem to feel passionate about it one way or another. This reaction is not only about taste, but also about mindset: Cholent is either viewed as a delicious and integral component of religious devotion and Jewish culture or as an old-fashioned remnant of a disregarded ethnic background and a time when poor nutrition was common. But many would agree with the German poet Heinrich Heine, who immortalized the stew in his poem "Prinzessin Sabbat." He wrote, "Schalet is the food of heaven... Schalet is the kosher ambrosia."
(See also Hamin, Harissa, Helzel, Kishke, Kugel, and Schalet)
Ashkenazic Sabbath Stew (Cholent)
6 to 8 servings
[MEAT]
1½ pounds beef or veal marrow bones
About 2 cups any combination mixed dried navy, lima, pink, pinto, and kidney beans
3 medium yellow onions, sliced
2 to 3 cloves garlic, whole or minced
6 medium potatoes, peeled and quartered
3 pounds beef flanken, brisket, or chuck roast
¾ to 1 cup pearl barley
2 to 3 bay leaves
About 2 teaspoons table salt or 4 teaspoons kosher salt
About 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
About 2 quarts water
1. In the order given, place the bones, beans, onions, garlic, potatoes, beef, barley, bay leaves, salt, and pepper in a large, heavy pot. Add enough water to cover.
2. Bring to a boil, cover, reduce the heat to medium- low, and simmer, skimming the froth from the surface, until the beans are nearly soft, about 1 hour.
3. Add more water if necessary. Tightly cover, place on a blech (a thin sheet of metal placed over the range top and knobs) over low heat, or in a 225°F oven, and cook overnight. Serve warm.
Cholent Kugel (Shabbos Ganif)
Cholent kugel is a dumpling cooked in the Sabbath stew.
Origin: Germany
Other names: cholent knaidel, Shabbos ganif.
With the spread of dumplings into central Europe by the twelfth century, housewives began to add them to the Sabbath stew, making it more substantial and stretching resources. In western Europe, these dumplings were originally called by the same name as the stew, schalet. In Germany, they became known as cholent kugel. (The dumpling eventually emerged from the stew to be cooked on their own, giving rise to the world of baked kugels.) In eastern Europe, they were whimsically called Shabbos ganif (Sabbath thief), since the dumplings stole flavor from the liquid of the stews in which they were cooked. The dumpling absorbs liquid while cooking, so it is necessary to add more water to the cholent. Cholent kugels originated as poverty food because they could be made from very inexpensive ingredients, but they became a beloved component of Jewish cookery. Today, many cooks still add a dumpling to their kugel, variously made from bread, flour, or matza.
(See also Dumpling and Kugel)
Cholent Kugel
4 to 6 servings
[PAREVE or MEAT]
5 thick slices challah or 2 large rolls, torn into small pieces
1½ cups (7.5 ounces) all-purpose flour
¼ cup
vegetable oil or schmaltz
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 to 3 teaspoons paprika
About 1 teaspoon table salt or 2 teaspoons kosher salt
½ teaspoon ground white or black pepper
In a medium bowl, soak the challah in water until soft but not mushy, about 2 minutes. Drain and squeeze out the excess moisture. Place in a medium bowl and mash until smooth. Add the flour, oil, egg, paprika, salt, and pepper, adding more flour if too loose; the mixture should be able to hold its shape. Form into a log and place it on top of hot cholent.
Choucroute Garnie
Choucroute garnie is a dish of sauerkraut baked slowly with cured meats and sausage.
Origin: Alsace
For centuries, the residents of Alsace in early fall after the cabbage harvest would fill at least one barrel in the cellar with shredded cabbages tossed with salt and weigh it down with a large stone. Salt is the oldest and still most widely used preservative—it discourages the growth of harmful bacteria, while allowing the survival of the flavor-producing acidifying bacteria that are responsible for the fermentation and tangy flavor of pickled cabbage, cucumbers, and olives. As the shredded cabbages sat in the barrel, the salt extracted much of its juices, forming a flavorful brine. Today, when few homes still pickle their own cabbage, signs across Alsace announce each fall the arrival of nouvelle choucroute (new sauerkraut).
In Alsation cooking, the use of sauerkraut, which is more common in German cookery than in French, reflects the area's Teutonic roots. The favorite Alsatian way of using sauerkraut is in one of the region's great dishes, simply referred to as choucroute. This dish originated as fall and winter peasant fare because it made use of inexpensive sauerkraut and preserved meats; it was simmered for an extensive period to tenderize the meat, mellow the cabbage, and enhance the flavors. As the dish gained prominence, wealthier people added higher-quality meats and sausages.
