From Bola d'Amour to the Ultimate Cheesecake: 150 Years of Anglo-Jewish Cookery Writing

The Jewish Manual, published in Britain in 1846, is regarded as the first Anglo-Jewish cookery book. It has established its author Judith Montefiore, wife of British philanthropist Moses Montefiore, as a seminal cookery writer defining Jewish food in Britain. Yet the recipes contained in the cookery book no longer correspond to the construction of ‘Jewish’ food in modern Britain. The article surveys three groundbreaking Jewish cookery writers—Judith Montefiore, Florence Greenberg and Evelyn Rose—offering a close textual reading of their work to determine the historical and cultural processes which inform our ideas about the identity of Anglo-Jewish food.