The World of Jewish Cooking: More Than 500 Traditional Recipes from Alsace to Yemen

Developed by Jews dispersed around the globe, Jewish cuisines have been shaped by both adopted cultures and by the laws of kosher. This excellent overview contains such diverse recipes as those for the Ashkenazic classic Roast Chicken and Ethiopian Chicken Stew with hard-boiled eggs. There are kugels galore (Alsatian Pear and Prune Kugel; Ashkenazic Potato Pudding; Indian Rice Pudding), but also Yemenite Spicy Poached Fish and Cochin Fish Soup from the Jews of the Malabar Coast. Marks (a rabbi and former editor of Kosher Gourmet magazine) provides tasty nuggets of intriguing information as well. It is no surprise to find a treatise on bagels (which Marks insists were not named after a Polish prince's stirrups as is often claimed) in a Jewish cookbook, but who knew that a Jewish fish seller first transformed Sephardic Pan-Fried Fish Fillets into fish and chips, or that a Minneapolis Hadassah chapter was behind the introduction of the bundt pan to the U.S.? Plentiful archival photographs and illustrations (showing everything from a Jewish family in Burma in 1938 to a Jewish poultry inspector in 19th-century France) add to the encyclopedic feel of this sweeping effort. (Sept.)