The Book of Jewish Food

Roden’s monumental exploration of Jewish cooking across the entire diaspora, from the Ashkenazi communities of Eastern Europe to the Sephardic kitchens of North Africa, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean. She spent fifteen years traveling the world to collect 800 recipes and the stories behind them, producing a book that won the James Beard Foundation Cookbook of the Year.

Why Start Here

While The New Book of Middle Eastern Food is the best entry point for Roden’s work overall, The Book of Jewish Food is her most personal and ambitious project. Drawing on her own Egyptian Sephardic background, she documents two great culinary traditions and the communities that created them. The Ashkenazi section covers challah, gefilte fish, matzo ball soup, brisket, latkes, babka, rugelach, and the full range of Eastern European Jewish cooking. The Sephardic section reveals a lesser-known world of fragrant stews, stuffed vegetables, flaky pastries, and bright salads.

What makes this book remarkable is how Roden connects food to history and identity. Every recipe comes with context: why it is eaten on a particular holiday, how it changed as communities migrated, and what it reveals about the people who cooked it. For readers who already enjoy Roden’s work on Middle Eastern food, this book deepens the picture by showing the specifically Jewish thread that runs through many of those traditions.

What to Expect

A substantial 688-page hardcover that reads as both cookbook and cultural history. The recipes span simple everyday dishes and elaborate holiday preparations. Roden’s writing is clear and precise, with helpful headnotes explaining regional variations. There are no step-by-step photographs, but the instructions are thoroughly tested. Some Sephardic recipes use specialty ingredients like orange blossom water and preserved lemons, while the Ashkenazi recipes mostly rely on common pantry staples.