Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France

by Joan Nathan
Alfred A. Knopf, 400 pp., $39.95

Jewish cooking includes a remarkably diverse collection of culinary traditions. This is because Jewish cooking has developed in tandem with local culinary customs throughout the diaspora. In Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous, the grande dame of Jewish cooking tackles, through recipes and narrative, the fascinating pathways and back alleys Jewish cooking has followed in a country particularly famed for its national cuisine. In France, Joan Nathan explains, Jewish foodways are fundamentally French foodways, except that they adhere to Jewish dietary laws.

Many of the recipes, such as the onion quiche or the salmon with sorrel sauce, are indistinguishable from classic French recipes, reinforcing Nathan’s argument that most Jews in France consider the food they eat to be fundamentally French. Others, such as the Alsatian fish choucroute with beurre blanc or the French chicken liver pâté, read like delicious Jewish renditions of French classics. And still others, like the cold, creamy borscht or the Moroccan eggplant-and-pepper salad (aptly named salade juive), remind us that modern-day France is also a cultural sponge, soaking up the traditions of its ethnically varied population. Nathan’s recipes take us on a guided tour of the many threads that weave the tapestry of French Jewish cooking and Jewish cooking in general.

The book is well-larded (the goose fat variety) with tasty stories of the families Nathan interviewed for the book, as well as her own personal reminiscences of travels in France. Fascinating sidebars introduce you to kosher butchers in the Marais, foie gras producers in southwest France, and famed chef Paul Bocuse’s kosher banquet room in Lyon. Glossy color photos on nearly every page illustrate not only the foodstuffs in the book but also the people and places written about.

This article appears in November 26 • 2010.

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Rachel Feit is an archaeologist by trade who worked her way through college in kitchens in Chicago and Austin before discovering that dishing up words was more satisfying that dishing up meals. She has been writing about food and restaurants for The Austin Chronicle for more than a decade, but still loves to cook.