Encyclopedia of Jewish Food

by Gil Marks

  During the Seder, the Passover story is recounted and relived through a progression of symbols and ceremonies as recorded in the Haggadah (literally "retelling"). The sights, sounds, tastes, and smells of the Seder—the Four Cups of wine, the Four Questions, the Seder plate, Elijah's cup, the Hillel sandwich ("wrap" of matza and maror), the search for the afikomen, and the songs—captivate young and old alike.

  The makeup of the Seder did not emerge fully formed at any one point in time, but evolved and changed over the centuries. The Bible mandated four commandments for the evening: to eat the paschal offering, to eat matza, to eat maror (bitter herbs) with the paschal offering, and to tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt. Passover night was initially a rather informal affair and each father and mother explained the events of the Exodus in their own words and manner. The ritual of the paschal offering has long since ceased with the destruction of the Temple, and for the past two thousand years, the paramount Passover symbol has been matza, a reminder of bondage and the night the Jews hastily fled Egypt.

  The Mishnah reveals that while the Temple existed, the Levites recited specific psalms of praise called Hallel while the people slaughtered their paschal offerings, and the Sages directed all Jews to recite them as well at home when the paschal meat was eaten, a practice retained in the Seder. There was also the requirement to recite Birkhat Hamazon (Grace after Meals), the only biblically mandated benediction. In addition, other early rabbinic regulations dictated the recitation of three texts in the Seder: the four formalized questions, a section of the Mikra Bikkurim (Deuteronomy 26:5—8), and Rabbi Gamaliel's comment, "Anyone who has not explained these three things on Passover has not fulfilled his obligation, and these are: Pesach, matza, and maror." These requirements reveal that by the time of the Mishnah, a ritual liturgy for Passover had developed, but one less extensive than the service used today. During the Geonic period, the Passover night liturgy expanded further and became formalized in its current form.

  Two thousand years ago, when the Sages living in Israel, then under Roman occupation, were developing the formalized Passover night liturgy, they incorporated into it not only the various Biblical commandments but also many elements from the Greco-Roman symposium (Greek for "drinking together"), a ritualized upper-class banquet and intellectual dialogue. These elements included reclining on couches, eating from private small tables, ritual hand washing, dipping hors d'oeuvres, fruit and nut relishes, a series of ritual wine libations, a sumptuous meal, and a series of questions as a starting point for an intellectual discussion of a designated topic. These aspects of the symposium served as idealized models of freedom and affluence, and reflected the Sages' view of the manner in which Seder participants should view themselves and conduct the Seder.

  The Seder, although drawing practices from the symposium, was never intended as a Jewish replica or simulation of that banquet. The stark difference between the Seder and Greco-Roman feasts is most dramatically evidenced in the guest list and finale of the symposium: only adult males and the elite were invited, its rituals were performed exclusively by aristocrats and forbidden to slaves, and the finale of the symposium was an orgy. Instead, the Sages structured the Seder to be an egalitarian, spiritual experience with everyone participating.

  The original Seder had a definite Greco-Roman and Middle Eastern flavor; most notably, participants dined in a Greek style by reclining on low couches, pillows, or carpets around a central location. The various Seder items were placed on several low tables, which were carried in and out of the room at designated points in the ceremony and placed in front of the Seder leader, a practice still maintained today by many Yemenites and other Eastern Jews. At a traditional Yemenite Seder, the attendees sit on the floor or cushions around a low table. The edges of the table are decorated with celery, chicory, parsley, radishes, and scallions. Three large platters cover the tables: one with three covered matzas (freshly baked, soft loaves), one with hard-boiled eggs, and one with a cooked lamb shank (zeroah) for each person (or whatever number of shanks the host can afford). Smaller containers hold the charoset, sometimes called dukah, and salt water. In addition, each place has a wine cup.

  However, problems emerged in Europe with the original traditions of participants lying on one side during the Seder and moving small tables containing the Seder items when during the early medieval period, people began to dine around a single large table while seated on chairs. In the rest of the world, until the nineteenth century, the vast majority of people did not use chairs—when eating or at any other time—believing that they weakened the spine. At first, Ashkenazim arranged various Seder items on any large platter, which could be moved at appropriate times. Eventually, craftsmen created special plates (ke'arah) to hold the traditional symbols. The original movable small tables actually contained all the items to be consumed at the Seder by the entire assemblage, but this was impractical for the relatively small Seder plate. Therefore, the custom developed of only putting a symbolic amount of food on the Seder plate and serving the bulk of it separately.

  The Mishnah prescribed two independent tables for the Seder items and, as a result, there emerged a dispute as to which items would be placed on the single Seder plate. There are three widespread customs regarding the number and arrangement of the items on the Seder plate, but today most Ashkenazim follow Rabbi Isaac Luria, known as the Ari, who directed that people use a plate featuring spaces for six items: karpas (a green vegetable), maror (a bitter herb), charoset (a fruit and nut mixture), chazeret (a second bitter herb), betzah (a roasted hard-boiled egg, representing the festival offering), and zeroah (a roasted shank bone or poultry neck, representing the paschal offering). Some authorities omit the chazeret, considering it to be redundant of the maror. Rabbi Moses Isserles advised that the items be arranged in a circle, in the order they are used in the Seder. Artisan Seder plates, with six items in a circle, reflect a combination of the customs of the Ari and of Rabbi Isserles.

  The Seder commences with Kiddush being recited over a cup of wine, and leads up to the matza. At the Seder, the first dipping (karpas), immediately following the first cup of wine, helps to open the evening and announce its incongruity and special nature. Many Ashkenazim start the Seder meal with hard-boiled eggs in salt water, while Sephardim serve huevos haminados (long-cooked eggs); both customs are derived from the Roman practice of starting feasts with eggs.

  The fondness among German communities for dumplings led to the creation of the most well-known Passover food—knaidlach (matza balls). Other traditional Ashkenazic Passover dishes that are featured at many Seders include gefilte fish with chrain (horseradish), stuffed veal breast, gedempte hindle (stewed chicken), carrot tzimmes, and matza kugel. Historically, Ashkenazim did not serve roasted meat or poultry at the Seder because the paschal offering was roasted. Traditional desserts include compote, nut cakes, honey cake, sponge cake, and ingberlach (ginger candies).

  Visitors to a Sephardic Seder would notice a number of differences from its Ashkenazic counterpart. Sephardim use escarole, endive, or romaine lettuce, never horseradish, for the bitter herbs. Many Sephardim use vinegar instead of salt water for dipping the karpas. Typical Sephardic charoset contains dates and other fruits in addition to apples, nuts and cinnamon. A Sephardic Seder might begin with sopa de prassa (leek soup), a fish appetizer, and mina (meat-filled matza pie). A main course of lamb—Egyptian Jews often eat roast lamb—or poultry may be accompanied by mimulim (meat-stuffed vegetables), and apio (sweet and sour celery). Desserts include pan de spana (sponge cake), torta de muez (nut cake), and mustachudos (nut crescents).

  The Passover Seder is an event artfully structured by the Sages to serve as a teaching tool. Optimally, various generations are represented. The Seder remains the most beloved and widely kept of all Jewish traditions—its continuing popularity illustrates just how successful the Sages were at obtaining their goal.

  (See also Afikomen (Tzafun), Chametz, Charoset, Gebrochts, Karpas, Maror, Matza, and Passove
r (Pesach))

  Seltzer

  Seltzer is plain flavorless carbonated water, which, unlike club soda, contains no salt. The name is derived from Niederselters, Germany, a town near Frankfurt. In the sixteenth century, the town began producing a naturally carbonated tonic called Selters Wasser, which was considered to have medicinal value. The German selterswasser became zeltzer and seltzer vasser in Yiddish, which due to the prominence of Jews in the carbonated water business, provided the American word seltzer. The first major development in seltzer making occurred in 1767 when Joseph Priestly invented a process for making carbonated water. Seltzer is made by filtering tap water to remove salt and minerals, then infusing it with carbon dioxide. For the following century and a half, seltzer was primarily dispensed by doctors, spas, and later pharmacies. In the mid-nineteenth century, some English merchants began making a version of this effervescent beverage using baking soda—hence the name soda water. As the word soda became associated with sweetened carbonated drinks, the slightly elegant "club" was added to plain soda water.

  The modern seltzer industry traces its origin to 1809, when Joseph Hawkins patented a machine for hermetically sealing seltzer in bottles. Jews in Germany and Russia entered the "zeltzer" business and, in the early twentieth century, brought their experience to America, where seltzer temporarily became an important part of Jewish life. Being pareve, it was ideal for a kosher household. Beginning in the 1920s, blue and green siphon bottles were a common sight on American tables, with seltzer men, most of them Jewish, making regular weekly deliveries. Specifically Jewish seltzer bottles might be embossed with a Star of David or the term "Shomer Shabbos" (Sabbath observant). In the early twentieth century, the cost of a glass of seltzer was two pennies, giving rise to the nickname "two cents plain." Seltzer is indispensable for creating another classic, the egg cream, which became a popular part of New York culture beginning in the 1930s. Also in the 1930s, seltzer became known as "Jewish champagne" or, less politely, grepsvasser (belch water) in Yiddish.

  Seltzer bottles became a standard prop of vaudeville and Jewish comics. In a 1991 episode of The Simpsons, Rabbi Krustofski reprimands his son who wants to be a clown: "Seltzer is for drinking, not spraying. Pie is for noshing, not for throwing." Seltzer served a more serious purpose in the 1948 war of independence when Israelis dropped some siphon bottles to fool the Arabs into thinking they had missiles.

  In 1807, Dr. Philip Syng Physick of Philadelphia flavored seltzer and added sugar to make it more palatable for his patients, creating the first carbonated soft drink. One of the first bottled flavored seltzers in 1869 was Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray Tonic; it was infused with celery seeds and sugar and was purported to have been invented by a doctor on New York's Lower East Side. In 1832, John Matthews, an English immigrant living in New York, created the soda fountain, a small carbonating machine for stores, which was first used in pharmacies. Seltzer's popularity began eroding after World War II as sweetened carbonated beverages began capturing the market, and was further weakened in the late 1960s by the rising popularity of imported bottled waters.

  (See also Celery and Egg Cream)

  Semolina

  The only flour used in the Temple—with the exception of the Omer offering of new barley on the second day of Passover and the jealousy offering brought in conjunction with the unfaithful wife—was solet. Abraham Ibn Ezra explained that solet is "wheat flour cleaned of bran," and added, "in Arabic this is called smeed." Smeed comes from the Aramaic semida (the Talmudic equivalent of solet), the Greek semidalis (fine flour), and the Latin simila (fine flour), the source of the English word semolina. Solet is not the same all-purpose flour that we currently buy in bags at grocery stores, but a distinct variety—durum wheat.

  By the Neolithic period, in Southwestern Turkey wild Triticum urartu spontaneously hybridized with the wild grass Aegilops speltoides, leading to the most important tetraploid wheat, Triticum durum (from the Latin for "hard"). This species, the firmest and most flavorful of all wheat species, is not only higher yielding than emmer, but also free-threshing (naked), which means that the grains are easily released from the glumes and hull, greatly reducing the amount of labor required for its use. In addition, durum contains a larger amount of gluten than emmer, resulting in lighter breads. Unlike other wheat species, the hard endosperm of durum breaks down into granules, called semolina, rather than a powder. When the resulting meal from the inner kernel is further pounded and sieved, it separates into a fine flour, the biblical solet (from the root "to sift/to select"). A high level of xanthophyll pigment in the endosperm of durum gives it a bright yellow color.

  By the time the Israelites entered the Promised Land, durum had become the preferred species of wheat in Israel, although emmer was initially more commonplace. Durum kernels (wheat berries) were variously parboiled and dried (bulgur), ground into meal (kemach), roasted, and boiled. Emmer remained the wheat of ancient Egypt, where durum was unknown.

  Today, durum is typically ground into six basic degrees of fineness and purity. The most common type in American markets is coarse grind (dysat solet in modern Hebrew)—also called semolina and farina— the type used for porridges, halva, and some cakes. Fine grind—also labeled #1 quality, durum granular, semolina flour, and suji—is a slightly granular meal used to make pasta, couscous, and halva, and to add crunch and flavor to pastries and cakes. Durum patent flour (the biblical solet) is a powdery product made from the inner portion of the endosperm and used to make pasta and bread. In comparison to common wheat, durum bread has a coarser crumb and heavier texture but is more flavorful (slightly nutty) and does not stale as quickly.

  Eventually, durum, emmer, and other types of wheat were surpassed by another subspecies, Triticum aestivum, called common wheat and bread wheat. The Romans, in particular, favored aestivum and planted it as well as durum in the territories under its dominion. Durum, however, is better for pasta, couscous, and bulgur than other varieties, and retains a large degree of popularity in the Middle East, Mediterranean, and North America.

  (See also Couscous, TTishpishti, and Wheat)

  Seor (Starter Dough)

  When barley and wheat gruels accidentally spilled into ancient campfires, the first breads emerged from the ashes. Wild yeast occasionally made its way into early wheat doughs, perhaps from naturally fermenting dates, giving rise to the first leavened breads. For millennia thereafter, bread making using wheat flour was a difficult and unpredictable chore. When yeast bread was baked in an area for any significant time, the amount of wild yeast in the air increased, as did the chances of successful leavening and more consistency in flavor. However, even in the best of circumstances, wild yeast proved notoriously unreliable and unpredictable. So until well into the nineteenth century, brewers provided some bakers with the foam (called barm, brewer's yeast, and bitter beer) from the tops of vats of fresh ale to serve as leavening for breads. Barm, however, was all too often of poor quality or even failed to work. Consequently, until the invention of compressed yeast by Dutch distillers in the late eighteenth century, the most efficient way to leaven bread was with a self-perpetuating flour and yeast mixture, known in the Bible as seor.

  Seor (from the Hebrew "to swell/to lift up") is among the most commonly mistranslated and misunderstood words in the entire Bible. The noun seor is almost always rendered in English as "leaven," a generic term meaning an agent that acts to produce a gradual change in another substance, which describes a host of leavening agents. Although seor is a leavening agent, not all leavening agents are seor. Rather, it refers to a specific leavening agent, known in English as starter, starter dough, or sourdough, and called biga in Italian, sauerteig in German, and zeurteig in Yiddish. (The similarity between the Teutonic sauer and the more ancient Hebrew seor points to a connection.) A starter is not simply a piece of reserved bread dough, which lacks the strength to adequately raise another batch of dough and spoils relatively quickly. Nor is a starter the same as a sponge, which is a light dough composed of yeast m
ixed with some of the liquid and some of the flour that will be used in the bread.

  A starter is a balancing act, a carefully developed and nurtured flour and water mixture possessing a natural culture of wild yeast and lactobacilli (bacteria). To use a starter, a predetermined amount of starter is mixed into a dough. Dough leavened with a starter requires a lengthy prefermentation process, a much longer time than that needed for modern commercial yeast.

  Making a starter can be a long and complicated process—it takes at least five days and commonly up to two weeks. Thus in Morocco, it was traditional on the evening following the last day of Passover, called Mimouna, for Muslim neighbors to bring a piece of starter dough to Jewish friends. Wild yeast are attracted to the sugar in grapes, while the fruit's acid helps to prevent the growth of dangerous organisms, so bakers discovered that inserting a whole bunch into the flour and water mixture for several days helps to create a starter. Flour, especially organic, contains organisms that aid the wild yeast in leavening the bread and also contribute to the flavor. Because the varieties of airborne yeast and bacteria differ from place to place, the flavor of the starter will differ as well. When ready, a starter will be bubbly and yellowish on top; it will sometimes be covered with a liquid because yeast produces carbon dioxide and water when exposed to air. The starter will develop a pleasantly sour, not spoiled, odor. Due primarily to the lactic acid, the starter also imparts a distinctive tangy flavor to bread—hence the term sourdough. Mold or a green or pinkish color is a sign that the yeast and bacteria in the starter are out of balance.

  After the starter is ready, if fed and maintained properly, it can last nearly indefinitely. To replenish the starter, bakers simply refresh it with equal amounts of flour and warm water and allow it to stand at room temperature overnight. It is then ready to use again or stored for future use. A specific starter culture can be passed not only from one batch of dough to the next, but also from generation to generation in a family. Certain European bakers zealously guard starters dating back many centuries. Until the twentieth century, professional bakers as well as many housewives commonly maintained their own treasured crock of starter to always be ready to bake bread.