History in a Jar: The Taste and the Trauma of Gefilte Fish

In 2004, a character in Tova Mirvis’s novel The Outside World presciently remarked, “Gefilte fish can be the next sushi… Because people are hungry for something authentic… They miss the past. Even if they never had it, they still miss it.” Twelve years later, Liz Alpern and Jeffrey Yoskowitz released their cookbook, The Gefilte Manifesto: New Recipes for Old World Jewish Foods, to both popular and critical acclaim. The trajectory of Jewish food in America has changed dramatically in the last two decades, calling into question the ever-fraught relationship between “kosher” and “Jewish” food. While gefilte fish has its origins in medieval Germany, this recipe for stuffed fish evolved over centuries until it became the more recognizable fish quenelle popular among Eastern European and American Jews at the turn of the twentieth century. A laborious task to be sure, midcentury American manufacturing lightened this undertaking by mass-producing these gelatinous fish balls in glass jars – ultimately becoming a grocery store staple that stirs both nostalgia and nausea in American Jewish memory. An insider’s dish, gefilte fish – once a means of thriftily stretching a meal – has been elevated to an almost sacred, elegant addition to a Jewish menu, an appetizer that elicits both delight and disgust. By looking at gefilte fish as a historically significant part of Jewish cuisine, as well as its modern innovations in the United States, we can see changing Jewish narratives regarding acculturation, innovation, and the place of nostalgia on the Jewish American plate.