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.

In this, his fourth vol­ume on Hun­gar­i­an Jew­ish life from the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry to 1940, András Koern­er explores his culture’s his­to­ry through the lens of food. He begins with kashrut reg­u­la­tions, not­ing Hun­gar­i­an tra­di­tions like requir­ing a Jew — even a child — to be present for a cow’s milk­ing, or the way the shochet would send the treyf hindquar­ters to non-Jew­ish butch­ers. He also explains dis­tinc­tions between Ashke­nazi and Sephardic cus­toms. Koern­er then looks at recipe col­lec­tions and cook­books, acknowl­edg­ing that they might not reflect what peo­ple (most­ly women) actu­al­ly pre­pared; while elab­o­rate desserts might have required recipes, every­day meals did not. ​“Peo­ple,” he reminds us, ​“eat dish­es and not cook­books.” (Koern­er, like his close col­league the late Gil Marks, is endear­ing­ly sen­si­ble.) But now that the table is laid, so to speak, he dis­cuss­es hol­i­day fare as well as the nec­es­sar­i­ly less excit­ing week­day meals. After cov­er­ing the what and how of char­ac­ter­is­tic dish­es, he delves into who ate with whom, home ver­sus ver­sus restau­rant fare, and the role of insti­tu­tion­al and com­mer­cial­ly pre­pared food. Koern­er clos­es by exam­in­ing some icon­ic foods — chal­lah, gefilte fish, cholent, kugel — in more detail. He has no prob­lem bring­ing up unan­swer­able mys­ter­ies — like why kindli cook­ies, shaped to resem­ble swad­dled babies, were baked for Purim. But what he can explain — why that dumpling in the cholent was called a ganef; it stole fla­vor from the stew — is unfor­get­table. So, too, are the many fine illus­tra­tions he has lov­ing­ly select­ed, bring­ing an erased world to our eyes.

None of this would be engag­ing for the gen­er­al read­er were it not for Koerner’s delight­ful­ly omniv­o­rous intel­lect. For him, all aspects of how Jew­ish peo­ple ate are impor­tant — from the ways kashrut was observed to the ways it was vio­lat­ed, from the lav­ish tables of wealthy homes to the hum­ble offer­ings of orphan­ages and soup kitchens. The meals of assim­i­lat­ed Jews are giv­en the same sig­nif­i­cance as those of the obser­vant. He’s hon­est about food he per­son­al­ly couldn’t stand, like his mother’s cloy­ing ​“sweet milk soup,” or dish­es he might try but hasn’t yet, like cholent eggs cooked in ash­es. There are even a cou­ple pages on bicar­bon­ate of soda, the indis­pens­able anti­dote to many of these recipes. Koern­er also high­lights proverbs that relate to food (der kugl ligt im afn pon­im, or ​“He’s got kugel all over his face,” mean­ing he real­ly looks Jew­ish), care­ful to give both the orig­i­nal Yid­dish and the translation.

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.