I’m 97. Here’s How American Jewish Food Has Changed in My Lifetime.

I love Jewish food! I love it all, whether I am eating it, looking at it or cooking it. 

My parents met in the United States. My father came from Austria, and because he was proficient in languages as a teenager, during World War I he was hired by the German army as an interpreter. After the war, he emigrated to America, where he met my mother, who grew up in a family of nine children in a Polish shtetl, where there were frequent attacks by the Cossacks. My parents met at a Socialist meeting, which many young Jewish immigrants attended.

They were poor when they came to the U.S., so they prepared and ate the least-expensive food available. My mother cooked all of the animals’ innards, including the lungs, liver, heart and tongue. With very little additional ingredients, she turned them into the delicious foods I remember from my childhood. Today, many people, unfamiliar with the flavorsome foods made from these increasingly uncommon animal parts, find the idea of eating them dreadful.  

Mama made many forshpeis, which is Yiddish for “appetizer.” There was my favorite, chopped liver; and schmaltz, pickled and Matjes herring  — salty and slippery, sold out of big wooden tubs — served to my father with a small glass of schnapps and fresh baked rye bread from the Jewish bakery. A great baker is still a local treasure but is rarely found; my mother bought her challah at Gertel’s Bake Shop at 53 Hester Street, which was started by  Polish immigrants, Izzy Gerber and the Thurm family.

Then there were black radishes, cut like noodles, with schmaltz, chopped onion and hard-boiled egg. Today, black radishes — sharper, spicier and larger than red radishes, with a rough black exterior and white interior — have almost disappeared from the produce market. 

A specially loved treat was feesle: sticky, cooked calves feet made with sugar and raisins. My mother also cooked calves feet with salt, pepper and garlic, and poured into a dish to cool into a stiff gelatin.  

When I was young, shopping was a daily activity and Friday was chicken shopping day. My mother made chicken soup every Friday. She would walk into the live poultry market and examine the chickens in cages, finding the best-looking one, opening the cage and poking her finger up the chicken’s tush. She only wanted a young egg layer for her soup. If she found eggs in the chicken she would have it killed and its feathers plucked. She made the soup and gave her kids the little, unformed eggs cooked in the soup as a treat! My mother made soft, fluffy matzah balls to add to the soup, frying onions in schmaltz to add  into the matzah ball mix. She dipped her hands in cold water before rolling the balls. 

Besides soup, my mother made many dishes from the chicken. With the giblets and wings, she made fricassee, often adding little meatballs, too. She served it with egg noodles for dinner. 

Today no one eats chicken fat, delicious schmaltz, because of worry about cholesterol. I feel sorry for those who never had the pleasure of watching the chicken fat melting, browning the onions and making the chicken skin into gribenes  — little, round, brown, crispy bits of fried chicken skin that made a tinkling sound as they cooked.  

Meat was roasted; the most beautiful and delicious was the stuffed veal breast. My mother cut a pocket in the veal breast and filled it with potatoes, onions, matzah meal and eggs, which became a kind of pudding. She rubbed paprika, salt and pepper and a little schmaltz on the meat, and when she brought it out of the oven, it smelled so delicious and had the most beautiful golden brown color, and it shone like a jewel. I haven’t seen veal breast in a butcher shop in years. As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen an old-fashioned butcher shop in years.

Now, dishes like lokshen kugel, potatonick and chopped liver are often mass-produced, found in the refrigerator or freezer section of the market. I remember each of these traditional foods, made with schmaltz and love, tasting unique and flavorful. 

When I think about changing times and changing tastes, I think about the foods I loved that are no longer available, like unformed chicken eggs, and those that are, look and taste different — like herring, which now comes in tiny pieces. Many familiar dishes that were eaten as part of the daily diet or for holidays have changed so much that they are hardly recognizable and taste bland. 

In Los Angeles, where I lived for 60 years, Brent’s Deli is as close to an old-time Jewish deli as you can get. I love their three-fish platter and their pastrami and corned beef sandwiches. I wish delicatessens like Brent’s, who are working to keep Jewish culinary tradition alive, the best of luck.