Shaping the “small things of common experience”: Migration and Adaptation in Ashkenazi Food Practices from Alsace to America

This paper demonstrates how some of the most iconic Jewish foods that became signifiers through popular culture in the last century have their origins in Alsace in the early Middle Ages. The historical development of a distinctly Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine will be traced from its roots in the Alsace region of France through its movement to Jewish settlements in Eastern Europe, and later to America with the mass immigration of the 19th and 20th centuries. The aim is to come to an understanding of how perception of what are considered to be some quintessentially Jewish foods has been shaped by developments in Alsace. The relatively unchallenged view of Ashkenazi food from contemporary commentators is that it developed in Eastern Europe, specifically Poland and the former Russian Empire. While aspects of the cuisine were adapted after migration, this paper demonstrates that a number of key dishes in the Ashkenazi tradition can be traced back to the Alsace region of present-day France, a territory of the Germanic Holy Roman Empire in the early medieval period when the Jewish community developed. The findings show that certain key dishes considered to be quintessential to Ashkenazi tradition developed or were adapted in Alsace, migrated to Eastern Europe with members of the Jewish community seeking refuge in the Polish commonwealth, and eventually crossed the Atlantic with further waves of migration.

Correction: Second page, first column, under 'Consequences of Migration', 24th line, should read 'chef Jean-Pierre Clause in the 18th century', not 17th.