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It has been a part of Eastern European Jewish food for many years, but gefilte fish began as a Jewish food.
This article was originally published on The Nosher, 70 Faces Media’s Jewish food site.
Some see gefilte fish as a delicacy, others as something too disgusting to contemplate. Either way, it would probably appear on most people’s short list of classic Ashkenazi foods. For good reason — it’s been part of the Eastern European Jewish diet for hundreds of years.
The funny thing is that gefilte fish didn’t start out as a Jewish food. The first mention of gefuelten hechden (stuffed pike) comes from a 700-year-old non-Jewish German cookbook in which poached and crushed fish was seasoned with herbs and seeds, stuffed with skin, and roasted. It was a popular dish during Catholic Lent, when the eating of meat was forbidden.
By the Middle Ages, that Catholic dish had migrated into the Jewish kitchen under the moniker gefilte (stuffed) fish. The rabbis considered fish to be the perfect food to kick off a Sabbath or holiday meal, since fish symbolize the coming of the Messiah and fertility. Plus, for the Jewish communities in Germany and Eastern Europe, it was easy to gain access to the fresh, sweet fish that is ground to make the dish. They were surrounded by well-stocked rivers, streams and lakes.
Gefilte fish even satisfied some religious commandments. It is prohibited to light a fire and begin cooking on the Sabbath and most holidays. Gefilte fish, happily, can be made in advance of the Sabbath day, chilled and eaten cold. There is also an injunction against picking bones from flesh on the Sabbath, as one might do when eating fish. With gefilte fish, you get the fish without the bones.
The downside to gefilte fish is that it takes a long time to prepare. However, this drawback is offset by an economic gain: a small amount of fish is needed to feed many people. Before the minced fish is cooked, it is combined with seasonings, egg, and bread or matzo flour to bind it and stretch it a little further. Poor families can ask the fishmonger only for the head, skin and bones of the fish. The skin is stuffed with bread and other fillings, while the bones and head would flavor the broth.
Given the time it took to grind the fish and put it back on the skin, a new type of stuffed fish eventually emerged, one that wasn’t stuffed at all. The call stalled; The focus has changed. The fish was shaped into hamburgers and poached in a seasoned fish broth.
Over time, gefilte fish has become synonymous with shtetl, Sabbath, and festive meals. There were many permutations on the plate, some of which pointed to your ancestry. The German Jews did it with pike. Polish Jews used carp and/or white fish. British Jews used saltwater fish such as cod and haddock. Jews in southern Poland and northern Ukraine served sweet fish because sugar beets were plentiful there. Lithuanian gefilte fish rich in pepper. The Jews of Russia and Belarus put beets in the poaching liquid to make a pink-colored fish and broth.
When Eastern European Jews abandoned their shtetls, they took their cuisine with them. Many of us have heard stories of new carp swimming in bathrooms on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. They bought them at the fishmonger at the beginning of the week and let them frolic in the bathroom before their domestic slaughter. Fresh carp from Thursday the first course on Friday night. And he also announced the beginning of the Passover Seder.
Over time, gefilte fish has lost some of its appeal. Did you need to have a tent in your bathtub while you waited for it to finish?Did you need your house to smell bad of fish? For some, its preparation was a triumph of old-school cooking. Others were content to move on.
And that’s when enterprising Jewish businessmen came here to fill the gefilte fish gap.
Shortly before World War II, Sidney Leibner, son of a fish shop owner, began marketing ready-made gefilte fish under the name Mother’s Fish Products, first in cans and then in Array glass bottles. The mother joined through Manischewitz, Mrs. Adler, Rokeach and others. Old World meets New in mass-produced gefilte fish jars.
The bottled products were simply tasty, but in the late 1970s, consumers were presented with the opportunity to make their own new gefilte fish without fuss, mold or odors: frozen loaves of ready-to-use gefilte fish swam to save the day. All you had to do was boil water with carrots, onions and celery, and then add the frozen bread.
As many of us begin to remember our roots, shtetl food has made a comeback in recent years. Millennials Jeffrey Yoskowitz and Liz Alpern lead “their project to reinvent Eastern European cuisine. ” Her cookbook, “The Gefilte Manifesto,” is filled with Old World recipes including herbed gefilte fish, baked fish terrines, and poached gefilte “quenelles,” as well as the original provision: Old Man’s stuffed gefilte fish. World.
As Stephen King wrote: “Sooner or later, everything old becomes new again. The same goes for life and the gefilte fish.
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