The book provides a comprehensive and scholarly overview of traditional Hungarian Jewish dishes. It includes brief histories of 135 dishes, translations of their historic recipes, quotations from contemporaneous descriptions of them, and for about half of them, also versions adapted to the requirements of the modern kitchen. In addition to investigating many other issues relevant to the subject, the book’s introduction makes a case for cookbooks as historical documents, describes the pioneering role of Hungary in the history of Jewish cookbooks, places them in the context of Hungarian Jewish history, tells the reasons why the book focuses on the period before 1945, and explores the differences between Jewish and non-Jewish cuisine in Hungary. The book is illustrated by a large number of historical photos depicting Hungary’s Jewish culinary culture before World War II. This is the first work to present the dishes of a nation’s Jewish cuisine mainly through quotes from primary sources, such as recipes in historic cookbooks and contemporary opinions about the role the dishes played in people’s lives. Previously, these sources have not been available in English.
