Early Jewish Cookbooks

"It's not often that I read a book with a title such as this for pleasure, but it was the unexpected bonus. András Koerner has written several books (in English) on Jewish life in Hungary, including the prizewinning Jewish Cuisine in Hungary (CEU Press/Corvina, 2019). The present volume, introduced most intelligently by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, looks not only at the early Jewish cookbooks written in Hungary but also addresses the wider question of the interpenetration of Jewish recipes and what might be called indigenous European cuisine. There is plenty chew on. Each of his chapters boasts a recipe appendix, so the enthusiastic can experiment. An admirable piece of work."—Petits Propos Culinaires

"Readers familiar with the work of András Koerner, whose encyclopedic Jewish Cuisine in Hungary won the National Jewish Book Award in 2019, might wonder if the author has exhausted his topic. But with Early Jewish Cookbooks, Koerner proves there's always room for more. In eight essays he homes in on Jewish recipes and cookbooks in nineteenth century Europe, especially Hungary. After all, Hungary's first Jewish cookbook was only the third to be published anywhere in the world; and throughout the nineteenth century, Hungary remained a leading publisher of Jewish cookbooks. András Koerner may have come late to his calling as a culinary historian, but now he's leaving us hungry for more."
https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/early-jewish-cookbooks-essays-on-hungarian-jewish-gastronomical-history—Bettina Berch, Jewish Book Council

"Koerner brings great intellectual imagination to the study of culinary culture. He not only teases out the web of relations that connects these nineteenth-century cookbooks to one another, recipe by recipe, but also examines the circumstances of their authorship, publication, marketing and distribution, the intended and actual readers, and the language in which they were written. He has produced a study of extraordinary depth and a landmark account of Jewish cookbooks anywhere at any time."
—Excerpt from the Preface by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett