Who’s in the kitchen: And you thought you knew gefilte fish

Have you heard the one about how to tell the gefilte from all the other fish in the sea? Simple, it’s the one with the carrot on its head.....or what type of cigarettes do Jewish mothers smoke? Gefiltered.... badam bam.

Gefilte fish, usually made from ground fish, onions, and eggs, is a culinary delight as well as Jewish shtick for borsht belt comedians.

Created in Europe out of religious obligation and a financial dilemma, gefilte fish survived in America due to creative advertising and an American Jewish desire to experience faith through the stomach.

Gefilte fish, usually associated with the Shabbat meal, has been a Jewish custom dating back to the Talmudic period. It has also been stated that some of the ancient sages thought of fish as an aphrodisiac. They believed the intoxicating odor on the Sabbath table would encourage couples to “be fruitful and multiply.” The Hebrew word for fish, dag, corresponds to the numerical value seven, which reflects Hashem’s commandment, “Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath unto the Lord.”

And here, you thought gefilte fish was just a recipe your mom’s great grandmother came up with in Europe. Read on. It was actually a savvy solution to financial and halachic issues. Poor Jewish women in Eastern and Central Europe were able to feed their families with a small amount of inexpensive kosher fish. They could also eat the fish without violating the prohibition against removing bones on Shabbat.

The women skinned the fish and ground the flesh with inexpensive ingredients such as onions, eggs, and bread before stuffing the mixture back into the skin for baking, hence the name, gefilte fish; gefilte is Yiddish for “stuffed.” Soon Jewish women stopped stuffing altogether and simply formed the mixture into balls for steaming or boiling.

Heard of the Mason-Dixon Line? The 49th parallel? There’s also the “gefilte fish line,” separating the Eastern European regions where Jews favored the sweet, from those who preferred the peppery varieties.The “gefilte fish line” ran through eastern Poland.