Encyclopedia of Jewish Food

by Gil Marks

  Subya

  Subya is a flaky loaf pastry.

  Origin: Yemen

  Other names: ma'asuba, saba'ya.

  As is typical of Yemenite cookery, subya is made from only a few basic ingredients. Non-Jews use a standard lean yeast dough layered with samneh (clarified butter) to make the loaf, while Jews usually substitute a type of Yemenite puff pastry called ajin. The ajin is rolled out and layered with beaten eggs or samneh and put in the oven before the advent of the Sabbath to slow-cook for Friday night dinner. Subya is also commonly served in a meal to break a fast. Traditionally, Yemenite women presented a gift of subya as a token of honor or to welcome a new neighbor. Subya is served with savory accompaniments such as hearty soup or chopped tomatoes with s'chug (chili paste), or drizzled with honey.

  Yemenite Pastry Loaf (Subya)

  6 to 8 servings

  [DAIRY or PAREVE]

  1 recipe Yemenite Flaky Pastry (Ajin), divided into fourths

  3 large eggs, lightly beaten, or 6 tablespoons samneh (Middle Eastern clarified butter)

  2 to 3 teaspoons nigella for sprinkling

  1. Preheat the oven to 250°F. Grease a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan or 8-inch round cake pan.

  2. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the 4 pieces of dough into 9-by-5-inch rectangles to fit the loaf pan or 8-inch rounds to fit the round pan. Press a dough rectangle or round into the bottom of the prepared pan and spread with one-third of the eggs (about 3 tablespoons). Repeat the layering, ending with a dough rectangle or round. Sprinkle with the nigella.

  3. Bake, uncovered, until golden brown, at least 3 hours. Let cool slightly or completely in the pan before cutting into slices.

  Sufganiyah

  Sufganiyah is a jelly doughnut.

  Origin: Germany

  Other names: Austria: krapfen; France: boule de Berlin; Germany: Berlinerkrapfen, Berlinerpfannkuchen, Berliners, gefüllte krapfen, Pfannkuchen; Italy: krafen; Poland: paczka, paczki; Portugal; sonhos; Russia: ponchiki, pyshki; Yiddish: ponchik, pontshke.

  In 1485, the cookbook Kuchenmeisterei (Mastery of the Kitchen) was published in Nuremberg, Germany, and in 1532 it was translated into Polish as Kuchmistrzostwo. Besides serving as a resource for postmedieval central European cooking and being one of the first cookbooks to be run off Johannes Gutenberg's revolutionary printing press, this tome contained what was then a revolutionary recipe, the first record of a jelly doughnut, "Gefüllte Krapfen." This early version consisted of a bit of jam sandwiched between two rounds of yeast bread dough and deep-fried in lard. Whether the anonymous author actually invented the idea or recounted a new practice, the concept of filling a doughnut with jam spread across the globe.

  Although most modern versions of doughnuts have a sweet interior, the original filled doughnuts were primarily packed with meat, fish, mushrooms, cheese, or other savory mixtures. At that time, sugar was still very expensive and rare in Germany, so savory dishes were much more practical, even for the middle class. In the sixteenth century, the price of sugar fell with the introduction of Caribbean sugar plantations. Soon sugar and, in turn, fruit preserves proliferated in Europe, all the more so with the introduction of sugar beet factories in the nineteenth century. Within a century of the jelly doughnut's initial appearance in Germany, every northern European country from Denmark to Russia had adopted the pastry, although it was still a rare treat generally associated with specific holidays. Much later, someone in Germany invented a metal pastry syringe with which to inject jelly into already fried doughnuts, making the treat much easier, neater, and diverse. In the twentieth century, machines were developed to inject doughnuts two at a time or in mass production.

  Since at least the early 1800s, Germans had called jelly doughnuts and custard-filled doughnuts simply Berliners, except in Berlin and Saxony. According to a German anecdote, in 1756 a patriotic baker from Berlin was turned down as unfit for Prussian military service, but allowed to remain as a field baker for the regiment. Because armies in the field had no access to ovens, he began frying doughnuts over an open fire, which the soldiers began calling after the baker's home, Berliners. The term soon became narrowed to denote only filled krapfen. Thus technically John F. Kennedy's famous declaration at the Berlin Wall, "Ich bin ein Berliner," means "I am a jelly doughnut." The Dutch also adopted filled doughnuts, commonly using an apple mixture. In Chile and some other South American countries, due to the large number of German immigrants, jelly doughnuts are known as Berlins.

  By the end of the century, jelly doughnuts were also called Bismarcken, after Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Due to the large number of central European immigrants, jelly doughnuts are known as bismarcks in parts of the American Upper Midwest, in Alberta and Saskatchewan in Canada, and even in Boston, Massachusetts. However, in Manitoba, they are called jam busters. In Britain, they became jam doughnuts, and in general American parlance, they are jelly doughnuts.

  Poles named jelly doughnuts paczki (flower buds). When French cooks were enticed to work in the Polish royal court in the mid-eighteenth century, they improved the quality of paczki dough—they added eggs and milk, resulting in a lighter, less greasy doughnut. These treats were originally filled with lekvar (prune preserves) and occasionally raspberry jam or rose-petal marmalade. Poles traditionally eat paczki, and plenty of them, on Fat Thursday, the Thursday before Ash Wednesday. This occasion, also called Paczki Day, is celebrated with dances, balls, and mounds of doughnuts.

  Polish Jews fried these doughnuts in schmaltz or oil instead of lard and called them ponchiks. In certain areas of Poland, they became the favorite Hanukkah dessert. A doughnut without a filling in Yiddish is a donat. Some Australian Jews, many of whom emigrated from Poland, still refer to jelly doughnuts as ponchiks. Polish immigrants brought ponchiks to Israel, along with the custom of eating them on Hanukkah.

  In Israel, however, ponchiks soon took the name sufganiyah (sufganiyot plural), from a "spongy dough" mentioned in the Talmud, sofgan and sfogga. The word sphog, meaning "sponge," is so ancient that there is a question as to whether it was initially of Semitic or Indo-European origin.

  In the late 1920s, the Histadrut, the Israeli labor federation—which was founded in 1920 and seven years later claimed twenty-five thousand members, or 75 percent of all the Jewish workers in Mandatory Palestine—decided to champion the less widespread jelly doughnut as a Hanukkah treat rather than levivot (latkes), because latkes were relatively easy and homemade, while sufganiyot were rather difficult for most home cooks, thereby providing work (preparing, transporting, and selling the doughnuts) for its members. Companies began turning out the doughnuts days or even weeks before Hanukkah, stretching both the amount of work and the period of enjoyment for eating them, although there are those who insist on waiting to eat one until after lighting the first candle. Sufganiyot subsequently emerged as by far the most popular Israeli Hanukkah food. They are sold throughout the eight-day festival at almost every bakery and market, and enjoyed by people in every community and of every religious stripe. In 1995, culinary students at the Hadassah College of Technology in Jerusalem whipped up the world's largest sufganiyah, weighing 35 pounds, including 5 pounds of jelly, although it paled in comparison to the jelly doughnut listed in the Guinness Book of World Records made in Utica, New York, in 1993 and weighed 1.7 tons.

  Today, about 70 percent of all sufganiyot consumed are stuffed with jelly, but recently a number of contemporary Israeli fillings have become popular, including halva, crème espresso, chocolate truffle, and numerous exotic flavors. Jelly doughnuts in Brazil are commonly filled with dulce de leche (a milky caramel), which recently also became a popular Israeli filling, known as ribat chalav in Hebrew.

  In 2009, about eighteen million sufganiyot were consumed in the few weeks before and during the eight-day holiday, or about three doughnuts per each Israeli, with the Israeli Defense Force alone purchasing around a half million that year. American Jews by and large adopted the sufganiyah. It is now common at most Hanukkah parti
es, although most Americans tend to stick to the old-fashioned jelly fillings and a confectioners' sugar dusting.

  (See also Doughnut and Hanukkah)

  Sugar

  Sugarcane is a tropical grass that grows twenty or more feet in length and one to two inches in diameter. Some scholars believe it originated in the South Pacific, perhaps in New Guinea, and made its way to the Indian subcontinent about five thousand years ago. It may have been mentioned twice in the Bible, but only in contexts that reflect its rarity and foreignness. For example, in Jeremiah, God asks, "To what purpose is to Me the frankincense that comes from Sheba and the sweet cane from a far country?" The first mention of sugar by a European can be found in the accounts of Nearchus, a Greek general who was introduced to the "reed that makes honey without bees" during Alexander the Great's campaign in India in 327 BCE. However, ancient Greeks and Romans were generally unfamiliar with this eastern sweetener.

  The word sugar is derived from the Sanskrit word sarkara (grit/sand), referring to sugarcane crystals. Around the sixth century CE, Persians or Radhanites (Jewish traders) brought sugar from India to Persia, where it was soon planted and called shakar. In the seventh century, the Arabs spread what they pronounced sukkar farther west to Syria, North Africa, and Sicily, and by 760, it had arrived in southern Spain.

  By the tenth century, the Nile River valley was the home of the world's finest sukkar. Documents from the Cairo Genizah (synagogue archives) indicate that Jewish merchants dominated North African sugar planting and production, a role they maintained until modern times. It was in Egypt that techniques for re- fining the cane were first developed, transforming sugar production into a large-scale industry. The method for processing sugar remained basically the same for the next thousand years. The juice was squeezed from the cane and boiled with egg white, which trapped the impurities as it coagulated. After the impurities were skimmed off, the remaining mixture was boiled down until most of the moisture evaporated. The residue was poured into cone-shaped molds—with a hole in the tip to drain the molasses—where it was allowed to crystallize. Then wet clay was pressed onto the wide end of the cone and allowed to stand while the moisture from the clay passed through the sugar, drawing out impurities. The molded crystals were called sugarloaf. A special device called a sugar cutter was used to remove pieces of sugar from the loaf. (Sugar cubes are the modern-day equivalent.) The pieces were ground in a mortar for easier incorporation into baked goods.

  The introduction of sugar to the Middle East led to a revolution in confections and baking, as sucrose proved far more versatile than other sweeteners in candy making. Soon confectioners in the Middle East were mixing sugar syrups with such items as nuts, seeds, and gum arabic to create a multitude of confections. Many of these, such as almond paste and sesame lozenges, are still widely enjoyed today.

  In the eleventh century, sugar continued its move westward as the Crusaders returned from the Middle East with a taste for the then-exotic sweetener. The Venetians quickly gained a monopoly over Europe's sugar trade and developed a method of refining it into uniform crystals, which were still sold in large conical loaves.

  Although sugar had arrived in Europe, it would not be until the eighteenth century that it found a place on most Western tables. Sugar's first use in Europe was as a mask for the bitter taste of medicine, a role not unknown today. Initially, apothecaries possessed the exclusive rights to dispense sugar, but the crystals' use gradually expanded in the fifteenth century to confections, baked goods, and various dishes. For centuries, because of its high price, sugar was the sole province of the European upper class. The masses continued to rely on honey for sweetening.

  The Portuguese began to break the Venetian monopoly on sugar in the 1420s by growing cane in their Atlantic islands, such as the Azores. Sugar arrived in the New World with Columbus on his second trip. The Portuguese began planting it in Brazil. Europeans colonizing the New World quickly recognized the Caribbean's potential for growing cane and saw a ripe opportunity to break the Venetian stranglehold. The presence of sugar in the New World did have a tragic consequence. The need for cheap labor to work these sugar plantations led to the introduction of slavery.

  Not surprisingly, Sephardim and Conversos, with a long history in the sugar business and connections to other Jews in the financial centers of Amsterdam and Antwerp, initiated many of the New World sugar projects, although in many cases they were later forced out by the anti-Semitic European powers. When the Portuguese occupied Dutch Brazil in 1630 and expelled its Jews, many of them spread throughout the Caribbean, bringing along their sugar-growing and sugar-refining techniques.

  West Indian sugar became such an important element in world trade that Holland ceded New Amsterdam to England in exchange for its captured sugar colony of Suriname and, in a similar vein, France was willing to yield its claim to Canada for the return of Guadeloupe. The loss of its sugar plantations was one of the key factors in France's decision to actively support the new United States during the American Revolution. In the 1540s, the first sugar refineries in England opened outside London and, as sugar became increasingly available and affordable there, the British quickly developed a passion for sweets. Sugar complemented other new foods that had recently arrived in Europe, including coffee, tea, and especially chocolate. The influx of Caribbean sugarcane meant a marked increase in the availability of sugar, transforming it from a luxury to a commodity, although the price was still too steep for the masses of eastern Europe.

  Sugarcane, however, is not the only source of sucrose. Today, about half of the world's supply comes from the long white roots of sugar beets. Many connoisseurs insist that cane sugar is better for boiling than sugar made from sugar beets, yet in terms of taste, cooking properties, and nutrition, they are almost indistinguishable. The sugar beet possesses one major advantage over sugarcane. Sugarcane grows only in tropical and subtropical climates, while sugar beets flourish in temperate climates. Together these two plants supply the world's demand for sugar.

  The process of producing sucrose from sugar beets was invented by German chemist Andreas Marggraf in 1747. When the techniques were developed to the point of economic feasibility, the sugar beet industry was launched. The first sugar beet—refining factory was established in Silesia, Germany (now southwestern Poland), in 1802. Others soon followed, many of them Jewish owned, in parts of central and eastern Europe. During Britain's blockade of Napoleonic Europe, the sugar beet gained unprecedented importance as, cut off from all sources of sugarcane, Napoleon was forced to turn to the German sugar beet process for Europe's sugar supply. Sugar beet factories promptly spread to many parts of northern Europe. As the price plummeted, suddenly everyone could afford the sweetener of royalty.

  Considering the Jewish domination of much of Middle Eastern sugar production, it is hardly surprising that sugar early on became a standard ingredient in Mizrachi and Sephardic households. Sugar syrups, known in Arabic as atar and shira, became a widespread way to sweeten treats. In eastern Europe, however, honey remained the primary sweetener until the advent of the sugar beet. Yet even in Europe, differences emerged. Ashkenazim who lived in regions where sugar beets grew, such as Galicia (now Southern Poland) and northern Ukraine, developed a preference for sweeter dishes and added plenty of sugar to their gefilte fish, stuffed cabbage, kugels, and challah. In some areas, such as northern Poland, Lithuania, and much of Hungary, sugar remained an expensive item because local authorities rejected requests to erect sugar beet refineries or the beet failed to thrive. People in these regions generally used much less sugar in their food, reserving it for desserts.

  (See also Atar, Beet, and Tea)

  Sukkot

  The seven-day holiday (eight outside Israel) of Sukkot begins two weeks after Rosh Hashanah. This festival represents a thanksgiving for the final major harvest of the agricultural year (Festival of the Ingathering), while its historical component commemorates the Lord's protection of the Israelites during the forty-year transitional per
iod in the wilderness (Festival of Booths). During the entire festival, the family dines and sometimes sleeps in a sukkah (booth), a structure with a temporary roof made of branches or reeds. The sukkah is customarily decorated with seasonal fruits and vegetables. The other major symbol of the holiday is the Four Species—the etrog (citron), lulav (palm branch), hadas (myrtle branches), and aravah (willow branches). Alone among holidays, Sukkot is regarded as Z'man Simchateinu (Season of Our Rejoicing), a time after the introspection of the High Holidays and after collecting the bounty the land has yielded to experience unsurpassed joy.

  This 1734 engraving by Bernard Picart depicts a Portuguese family in Holland dining in the sukkah (booth) during the holiday of Sukkot.

  The harvest theme of Sukkot led to the incorporation of a bounty of fruits and vegetables into the dishes. Pickled vegetables and vegetable salads are also customary in most Jewish communities. In particular, stuffed vegetables and filled pasta, filled pastries, and filled pies, symbolizing plenty, are commonplace on Sukkot tables. In addition, the fare must be easy to shuttle outside to the sukkah and keep hot; accordingly, casseroles and meal-in-one stews are popular fare.

  Ashkenazic Sukkot foods include tzimmes, stuffed veal breast or poultry, knishes, filled dumplings, fruit and cabbage strudels, fruit fludens (layered pastry), and fruit or vegetable cakes. Romanians make guvetch (vegetable stew), while Russians customarily serve a cabbage and meat soup. A favored Polish delicacy was gebruteheh euter (roasted cow's udder). Sephardic fare includes eggplant stews, green beans, vegetable salads, and filled phyllo pastries. Greeks and Turks serve eggplant casseroles, such as moussaka/saku. Persians enjoy tachin-e badenjan (rice and eggplant casserole). Bukharans favor oshee tos kadoo (stuffed pumpkin) and samsa (turnovers).

  Sukkot is a popular time for visiting and entertaining and, after being seated in the sukkah, guests are offered a wide variety of treats. A medieval European tradition, first mentioned in the Zohar, is Ushpizin (from the Aramaic ushpiz, "guest"). On each of the seven nights of Sukkot, one of seven biblical figures is welcomed in order into the Sukkah—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, and David—emphasizing the importance of inviting guests and, in particular, the poor to share the experience of the sukkah.