Jewish Cuisine in Hungary

"Throughout his book Koerner will demonstrate that in the case of Hungarian Jews, as probably in that of other Jewish groups, cultural identities and processes are actually more strongly, vividly and immediately felt in a family's kitchen than in its Synagogue. András Koener's Jewish Cuisine in Hungary is richly illustrated with many photos and other reproductions of material-culture artifacts and symbols that together turn this book into a lively tour-guide of sorts to the culinary ethos of predominantly nineteenth-century Hungarian and Central-European secularizing/ed Jews."—Hungarian Cultural Studies

"Readers looking for a typical cookbook may be alarmed when they dig into this gorgeous volume. While the subtitle advertises eighty-three authentic recipes, neither many of the ingredients (goose, carp, giblets, boiled beef) nor the techniques (stuffing goose necks, making pudding from smoked beef) seem particularly accessible. Yet this book is quite irresistible. Beyond the honesty and charm, it's Koerner's commitment to defying Nazi destruction, to saving Hungarian Jewish culture, that makes this book so compelling. Jewish Cuisine in Hungary is righteous scholarship."—Jewish Book Council

"This is a rigorously researched, engagingly written recreation of daily life filled with rarely seen photographs and pen and ink illustrations by Koerner himself. I adored this book.... Koerner focuses on the objects, food, and people that were an integral part of his great-grandmother's everyday existence. These alluring pages rescue a way of life from oblivion via an indelible portrait of an observant Jewish woman who serves as a representative of her entire community. Much is illuminated through her recipes and her great-grandson's loving illustrations."—The Arts Fuse

"Andras Koerner, author of Jewish Book Award-winning 'Jewish Cuisine in Hungary,' uses untouched culinary traditions to explore centuries of cultural history before the Holocaust. The 2019 Jewish Book Award in the inaugural category of food writing and cookbooks has been given to 'Jewish Cuisine in Hungary' by Andras Koerner. As Koerner told The Times of Israel in a phone conversation, the book 'offers a cultural history of the diversity of Hungarian Jewish cuisine before 1945.'"
https://www.timesofisrael.com/flavor-of-prewar-hungarian-jewish-life-captured-in—Rich Tenorio, The Times of Israel

"András Koerner's Jewish Cuisine in Hungary paints a vivid portrait of prewar Jewish Hungary through its food, its bakers, its home-makers, and more. The focus on Jewish households and local businesses shifts the scholarly gaze from typical historical subjects to the realm of working people and women—fertile ground for meaningful inquiry. The book quotes extensively from memoirs, cookbooks, and periodicals of the time with each rich
passage reveling in the minutiae of daily life. Koerner masterfully weaves together photos, objects, and eighty-three recipes plucked from rare historical
cookbooks to transport the reader to Budapest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to Hungarian Jewish holiday tables and rural goose farms.
Ultimately, Koerner sheds new light on prewar Hungarian Jewish life by exploring the role food plays in its culture in such innovative ways, and so
too does he help us understand the Hungarian Jewish place in broader Jewish food culture. Jewish Cuisine in Hungary will no doubt serve as an essential historical reference for years to come, while also modeling what's possible in the field of food scholarship."—National Jewish Book Award