by Dovilė Rūkaitė
The issue of survival is an urgent one in the history of cuisine just as much as it is in the history of humanity. Do the fittest and most delicious survive? So what are we to make of the apparent success of this boiled ball, a brownish gray mass with a slice of carrot atop, either sweet or salty, framed by a pink jelly, or just as often with a sauce of indeterminate color? Gefilte fish is an established dish in world cuisine; in the kosher food section you can find several different types and it is an essential food during the holidays at European Jewish homes.
Gefilte fish is an Ashkenazi Jewish dish of epic proportions which has survived the challenges of the centuries remaining almost unchanged to the present time. Litvaks make this stuffed fish in the following way: the carp or trout is gutted, the bones are removed from, the fish fillet is combined with spices and the mixture is placed back within the skin of the fish or strips of it and boiled in a pot with carrots. The stuffed fish cools in the fish broth which gels into a jelly, is decorated with lateral slices of carrot and served with horseradish. Jewish housewives in Vilnius used to put bits of beet in the pot so the jelly would take on a pink color and a more interesting taste.
The fish of choice for stuffing in the Jewish kitchen is the carp or trout, but cod may also be used. Different fish may be mixed. Carp are easier to prepare because of its bulk, while trout meat is drier and contains more bones. Still, trout scores higher with connoisseurs in the categories of appearance and clever design.
Litvak gefilte fish is made with salt and pepper. If you travel fifty kilometers to the west of Warsaw, you may find sweet gefilte fish. Marvin Herzog even wrote his dissertation on the existence of the “Gefilte fish line.” This is a geographical boundary defining the ranges of the sweet and salty versions of the dish, running roughly north to south about 60 kilometers east of Warsaw. On the western side you find sweet gefilte fish, to the east, with salt and pepper. Jews call sweet gefilte fish “Polish fish” and Poles call it “Jewish fish.” The sweetness isn’t simply sugar, cooked sweet onion is placed in the ground fish mixture. Unsweet ground fish mixtures are made with green onions and black pepper.
The Ashkenazi Jewish culinary heritage has survived and become legendary, and remains popular today. Traditions guide the food-making process. Gefilte fish, for example, is deboned and ready to eat, and so is appropriate for the Sabbath meal (even picking bones out of food is considered work and a violation of the Sabbath). Housewives would prepare the dish for Sabbath Friday evening, and the next day the dish would have cooled, the gel would have set and the food could be consumed for several days. Some families stretched the food by adding matzoh flour or carrots to the ground fish mixture. At some point the fish skin was largely discarded, so gefilte fish now means boiled fish balls made out of the ground fish mixture as well as formally stuffed fish.
Gefilte fish is also popular because it is compatible with kosher cooking. Fish are “pareve,” meaning in kosher food rules it is neither meat nor dairy, and may be combined with other foods.
With Jews living all around the world, I was interested to see how the “Gefilte fish line” operates outside Europe, for example, among Argentine Jews. My classmate Ruben was born in Argentina and his father-in-law was a Litvak. Of course, it is usually the women who preserve culinary tradition. When I asked Ruben whether he ate sweet or salty gefilte fish during Passover, he asked back: “Are you asking me about salty and sweet gefilte fish?”
Latin America has a diversity of fish unknown to Eastern Europe. Ruben’s family boils fish balls in a spicy, salty tomato sauce and serves them hot.
My teacher Hedva’s mother comes from Egypt where no one even dreams of gray fish balls. Hedva only learned of them from her father, a Romanian Jew. His mother used to make him sweet and salty gefilte fish balls.
Gefilte fish la Raquelita is how Mexican families call their fish balls in a spicy tomato sauce.
In the United States gefilte fish is usually made of equal parts ground carp, trout and whitefish flesh. Sometimes a fourth part of “buffel fish” is added (buffel is Yiddish for buffalo). This fish is similar to carp and is reportedly only found at Chinese fish markets now. Incidentally, many Jewish kids in America grew up thinking carp live in bathtubs, since a live carp was often placed there for a while if there wasn’t room in the icebox…
Author Ellen Cassedy recalls her mother used to keep carp brought home from market in the bathtub, and that pepper was added to the ground fish meat. And the gefilte fish line, she says, isn’t purely culinary. Linguists have also defined northern and southern ranges of Yiddish according to how “gefilte fish” is pronounced.
Gefilte fish isn’t giving up the fight any time soon. Ever new names for the dish appear in the run-up to Passover in Israel every year. In the kosher food shop of the Stockholm Jewish community I counted three different names for the dish. Gefilte fish isn’t just a cult food offering, but almost a cult in and of itself. In December of 2014 there was a Gefilterama, an almost week-long festival held in Tel Aviv during Polish Cuisine Week. In London the annual kosher food fair is called Gefiltefest.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community assembled for European Day of Jewish Culture 2016 and printed Litvak recipes submitted by members, including Mira Traub’s recipe for gefilte fish.
Article prepared to mark European Day of Jewish Culture 2016 “Jewish Languages.” The Cultural Heritage Department under the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture supported events to celebrate the day in Lithuania.