From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made in 1751, when Benjamin Franklin wrote to express his fears about German immigrants who were arriving in Big numbers.

He worried that they would come to outnumber the English founders, that they would refuse to assimilate, that they would not learn English.

He wrote, quote, why should the Palatine boors be suffered to swarm into our settlements, and by herding together establish their language and manners to the exclusion of ours?

Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of aliens who will shortly be so numerous as to Germany's US instead of us, our English eyeing them, and will never adopt our language or customs any more than they can acquire our complexion.

End quote.

That's Ben Franklin, really.

You can imagine that being any number of political podcasters today.

As Doctor Nora Rubel writes in her new book, The Question of American Identity and Culture has always been contested.

Her book is about, on the surface, a cookbook.

More than that, it is an exploration of culture and assimilation and the way certain customs melt into others.

And for me, it was the story of a massively influential piece of American culture that I had never heard of until her book.

So her book is called recipes from the Melting Pot The Lives of the Settlement Cookbook.

So what was the Settlement Cookbook?

It was first published in 1901.

It was a collection of recipes aimed perhaps housewives who might brush up on their skills in the kitchen to impress their husbands, or for women looking to find a man.

Rubel writes that it was ostensibly multi-ethnic and ostensibly non-denominational, but Jewish immigrants could discern the very Jewish roots and ideas, even if most of the readers could not.

And that is how the Settlement Cookbook ended up needing 40 printings sold more than 2 million copies.

It's also how it ended up becoming a touchstone for Jewish immigrants looking to Americanize, while also becoming popular with non-Jewish readers.

This is one of the really interesting and smart books we've had the pleasure to come across our desk in a long time.

Nora Rubel is the author of recipes for the Melting Pot The Lives of the Settlement Cookbook.

It is out now.

Welcome back to the show.

It's nice to have you.

Hi, Evan.

It's nice to be back.

I don't know how to write an intro on this.

I don't even know how to describe it.

I mean, like, this book is about so many different things.

It's so interesting.

And I just want to start by asking you.

I know it's been a long process, but when did you know you wanted to tell the story of the Settlement Cookbook?

So it first occurred to me a little over 20 years ago.

I did a little bit of other stuff between now and then, but it from the time that I actually started working on it, it's been about 14 years.

I learned about the settlement cookbook when I was in graduate school.

So, I mean, I'm Jewish.

I'm, I guess first generation American.

My parents are not.

We're not born here, so it's not the kind of thing that got passed down to me at all.

I read about it in a bunch of memoirs and secondary sources when I was looking at, immigration and ethnic history in graduate school and, particularly when it came to Jews.

So I thought, this is interesting.

I've never heard of this cookbook because I was also really interested in food studies.

I've done a lot of work on food and religion.

And, when I asked my American Jewish friends, they were all like, oh, yeah, my mom had that.

My grandmother had that, like, everybody knew about this cookbook, and it just was this thing that was completely foreign to me.

And then I was surprised that there really wasn't much more about it.

And.

You almost had to, like, do this, like, has anybody already written this book?

Right.

I'm about to jump in.

I was like, yeah, I'm like, I'd love to read it.

Yeah.

Where is it?

Right.

So, so yeah, that's kind of how it happened.

And the more I looked into the story, it just became more and more interesting.

And I gave a few papers on this.

When I was sort of starting out and I gave a talk at my alma mater where I did my PhD at UNC Chapel Hill, and there was a huge audience for it, and it was a lot of older women.

And I asked as I kind of used to do, how many of you grew up with the Settlement Cookbook?

And at least half, more than half of people that were in the auditorium raise their hands.

And then afterwards, someone came over to me and said, you know, all these women were out there showing each other their cookbooks and, and kind of comparing what date theirs was.

And then somebody came up to me and said, I brought my book because I wanted you.

I wanted her to hear it.

I wanted the book to hear your talk.

And I was like, well, I better get writing on this.

It seems to be important to a certain generation.

So while I can still talk to them.

But it's it's not a niche book.

And it wasn't just a Jewish cookbook, which we're not which we're going to talk about.

In fact, on the cover, our very highly noted American Jews, Lucy and Desi.

Yeah, I know.

On the cover is a picture of Lucy and Desi, who are not Jewish.

No, but it's not this beautiful picture.

It isn't that.

Picture.

I think growing up, with I Love Lucy reruns when I was a child, I never realized that when they were young, they were quite as beautiful as they are.

Like, they're pretty hot in this picture.

Yeah.

I mean, both of them.

But, don't make me wait on the hotness of them, but.

Okay.

All right.

I'll have you all go with it.

Everyone be the judge.

Look at that square job.

Desi, I. Know, and anyway, so there's a picture on the front of the book.

And I came across this picture ten years ago and just kept it.

It never occurred to me that this would be the cover of the book, but, it's a picture of Lucy and Desi in their kitchen.

This is their real kitchen.

And this isn't from the show.

And, Desi is drinking what looks like a glass of milk and Lucy is sitting on a stool holding the settlement cookbook and studying it very intently.

And apparently it was part of a photo shoot.

At their own home not long after they got married.

So this is really them as newlyweds.

Something that she actually had at home.

You said in a recent talk that one.

Because we should I should pull back and say it comes out in 1901 and it comes out of a Milwaukee settlement house.

Correct.

And one historian claimed it is no exaggeration to claim that this book rivals beer as Milwaukee's most notable product.

It's amazing.

It's a. Great quote.

I know it, it really is amazing.

The first time I went to Milwaukee to do some research, I felt like totally starstruck.

You know, like, this is Milwaukee.

You know, I've been reading so much about it, but also that everybody knew who I was talking about.

Right.

If I mentioned Lizzie Kander, who was the, creator of the cookbook, or if I mentioned The Settlement cookbook, everyone's like, oh, you know, that's a huge Milwaukee story.

So it's a lot of pride.

Yeah, they're very, very proud of this, this export.

And I've been saying 40 printings, I mean, around 40 for more than.

40, 40 editions.

Yeah, 40 additions.

2 million copies.

It probably wouldn't have done those numbers if it was viewed strictly as a Jewish cookbook.

There's no way right?

There's no way.

If this was only read by Jews that it would have been this popular.

I mean, numbers aside, right?

Well, you've said that the settlement cookbook was originally meant, in part as a way to Americanize New and Green Jewish immigrants, while in later years it became a nostalgic way for acculturated American Jews to connect to a traditional Jewish past.

Yeah.

But but it was.

Well, let me ask you this.

Did Cantor did they say, look, people aren't going to read this as a Jewish cookbook, but we're going to Americanized Jews with this.

I mean, was that like part of the intent or did that kind of spin out of the success of the book?

Okay.

So the book itself came out of this cooking class, right?

It was actually directed towards Jewish immigrants.

So Cantor ran the settlement house in Milwaukee.

It was a specifically Jewish settlement.

Not all settlement houses had religious affiliations, but some of them were a little uncomfortable for some Jewish immigrants because either they, you know, required kosher food or they spoke Yiddish and felt kind of like that wasn't taken seriously as a language.

And, and so there were Jewish settlement houses that popped up all over the country.

So this particular cooking class was, meant for Jewish immigrants in Milwaukee, and it was a kosher cooking class.

The kitchen was kosher.

Cantor had the only, professional kosher kitchen outside of New York City.

So that was sort of a big deal.

Although she herself and all of her cohort were all like hardcore reform Jews, and they didn't keep kosher themselves, so they just did this really to, like, meet these, meet these girls where they were and teach them sort of how to cook with American ingredients and how to learn American kind of mores and ways of being.

But the words Jew or Jewish or even Hebrew, they don't appear in the settlement cookbook at all.

Is that right?

Correct.

There is one, word.

Israelite ish.

Israelite ish.

In the note before.

And there's not many notes in this book.

Like, it's a really encyclopedic book.

And you don't have, you know, any of, like, the contemporary, like, you know, words about.

Oh, I was in Tuscany and I met this man, and he took me to learn how to make ravioli or whatever, like, you know, and it's it's very like black and white, no nonsense.

Which, by the way, every recipe you look on like, I can't look up a cocktail recipe without, like, 2500 words before I get to the recipe about why this person put it on and which is, like, usually really lovely.

It is really.

Lovely, but sometimes I just.

Want to like, you want the recipe.

And also I can't stand when you have to watch a video.

I feel like I'm like too old for that.

Like I'm just like, no, I don't want to watch a video I can read.

Just let me like, figure this out.

But, but anyway, not to, you know, not to yuck anyone's yum.

But but the note.

Two is really not a. Lot of note.

Yeah, there's.

Like, tell me about.

That.

So this one is before, the section on chafing dishes.

And so there's something I, you know, I don't have it in front of me, but it was something like, you know, these days, the chafing dish is king, you know, because it was very popular.

And also, Israelite ish women have used, the chafing dish for centuries and or generations.

And that came out of the book in the 50s.

But that I assumed my, my reading of this is that it had to do with, chocolate, which is a long cooking over a flame stew that Jews would make on Friday and eat on Saturday because they couldn't light a flame on the Sabbath.

So that but that's like one, one note.

And then the only other thing is that the word kosher is used in, the head note over meat, which is just like a weird little instruction of how meat is kosher.

A cultured, you know, and that means being hit over the head and, cut and or maybe not hit over the head.

Not head over the head.

Throat cut.

But the animal having the throat cut.

Yes.

And bled out.

Right.

So.

And then salted and the amount of time that it had to sit.

So.

And that was in there for, the first, at least 45 years.

And so again, Jewish readers will see that.

And that's when we talk about like what's coded.

Right.

Right.

That they would look at that and say, okay.

Like, I mean, there's matzo balls in the first edition, right?

Like there's Spencer balls in the first edition, and there are mutts, there are all kinds of matzah recipes.

And, in later editions, you just had like a huge Passover section.

But the thing is that other cookbooks at this time did not have any of those.

Right?

That other general cookbooks didn't do this.

But there's frog legs.

Yeah, there's pork chops.

There's bacon wrapped steak.

I mean, there's oyster cocktail.

So you've said that the cookbooks Judaic Nature was questioned from the start because of those things.

I mean, I'm not sure that at the time it was questioned or critiqued in the way that it was in later years.

Sure.

Of course.

Because at the time, this is completely normal for reformed Jews.

Oh, okay.

So even reformed.

Jews, it's totally normal.

So, it wasn't I mean, the reform movement officially kind of rejected kosher dietary laws in the 1880s.

Like in a platform.

And there's this kind of apocryphal story of the first graduating class of the, the reform rabbinical school.

And this is like a huge deal because up until this point, rabbis are being imported.

There's no, like, American rabbinical school.

So you either have synagogues that are led by laypeople or by cantors.

And so this was a big deal.

They were creating this American Judaism, this Reform Judaism.

They were, you know, domestically born rabbis.

Anyway, to celebrate the graduation, they had this huge banquet.

They invite a lot of Jewish dignitaries.

And, you know, like the first course that comes out is like clams on the half shell, right?

Like the whole thing, with the exception of pork, is all tariff, which is not kosher.

And, and it is, you know, there's this apocryphal story that a bunch of men got up from a table and said, that's it.

And they stormed out and they started the conservative movement.

So that's like, that's where.

But it's apocryphal.

I mean, it.

Might have.

Kind of happened.

It was sort of a last straw.

They were like, how are we?

How are we saying this is a Jewish event, right?

If we were traveling to any country, you know, and we were invited as, as rabbis or whatever, they would make sure there was something for us to eat, like, what is this?

Right.

And, so, so Reform Jews just didn't keep kosher.

They, you know, there was a there was a move in early reform, which we call radical reform, to pretty much get rid of all ritual elements, or what they saw as superstitious and to focus on ethical commandments, like to make this an ethical, more universal religion.

Well, we're going to go into, like I said, a number of different directions.

But listeners, I would ask you, when you think about your favorite kinds of cooking, I'm very curious what comes to mind.

A lot of Americans who say I love Italian cooking.

You know, maybe you love, you know, traditional Jewish cooking.

I mean, I there's all kinds of things you might think of, but the definition of that and why you think of it that way to me is really interesting.

And we're going to be talking with Nora about that.

Also, there are the recipes from the Settlement Cookbook sort of pop in and out of the book at places, and we are going to talk a little bit about what Nora loves to cook, because, you know, it's my show and I want to know.

So we're going to talk about that coming up.

But I'm going to steer back for just a moment to that Benjamin Franklin quote.

I started with that because when I, when I read that in your book, I had never heard that.

That's a 1751 quote from Benjamin Franklin.

He is very concerned about German immigration.

He's talking about, you know, why are we going to give up our communities to these aliens?

They don't speak.

They're not going to learn English.

They don't speak our language.

They're going to herd together, and they're not going to learn our customs, and they're going to take over.

They'll outnumber us.

Yeah.

And when I read that, I thought, that is straight out of the discourse.

The Zeit guys today, isn't it?

I love that you started with that, because to me, that's sort of the crux of this book.

To me, I felt like that was the core of what I kept thinking about with this book.

This book is not just a book about a cookbook.

It's a question of identity, assimilation, the expectation of immigrants, the way immigrants sometimes feel pressure to assimilate, or how they try to do that.

What helps with that, and what demands culture puts on them.

But I had never heard that quote before.

I mean, it's pretty heavy.

It's it's it's amazing.

Right.

And it does sound, you know, not unlike stuff that comes from our top.

The most popular podcasters.

Yeah.

Commentator.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so, you know, I'm really interested in the way that different groups of people try to create a definition of what it means to be American.

And, and I think it's just so important to know that this is constantly contested.

Right?

This is just never agreed upon.

And and as time goes on, the point where people become American and get to stay American just just moves, right?

For the convenience of whoever happens to be in charge or wants to make the rules.

And this cookbook comes out at a time when you know there's more immigration than there's ever been.

It's the second wave of, great immigration.

You have, Southern and Eastern Europeans, a lot of Jews, a lot of Catholics.

And that completely shifts the dynamic.

And, you know, when you hear politicians saying, how come we don't get more people from Nordic countries, this is what they do then that.

Literally the president in the state said.

That.

Yeah.

And that's what happened in the early 20th century.

And that's why in 1924, the the the doors were closed.

Right.

There there isn't, Immigrant Exclusion Act.

And because there was a hope to kind of keep it, not let it get any further adulterated with these kind of darker, worthier foreign people.

I mean, Franklin even refers to they will not be able to learn our customs anymore than they would be able to take the complexion of, of their skin, you know?

Right.

He talks about the.

Racialized is.

Racialized in a way that today, in the 2026 context, be like, you know, well, if you're white, those people are German.

That's white.

I mean, like, it's a very sort of rudimentary way of thinking about race today.

Yeah, but they were racialized.

It then in a very different way.

Right.

And to your point, I mean, this is it's not like, well, after the Declaration of Independence, the question of Americanism has already been challenged.

This is a quarter century before the declaration.

Correct.

At a time when when groups were trying to protect their own territory.

Does that make you so?

In a way, I wonder if that makes you feel some sort of despair.

I mean, do you feel like.

Well, we always struggle with the blending of culture, or is it that with a little bit of time and wisdom, we're going to look at this and say, calm down.

They were worried about this in 1751.

I'm sure earlier than that.

It's been published in so many different ways.

But we know that that fear ultimately doesn't bear out, that we are a multicultural society and we are better for it.

God, I, I want to believe the second thing, but, you know, I don't know.

And I think that we, you know, time, God willing, as long so hopefully we get better.

But I think that also history shows us that we don't always get better.

And, you know, it's it it's cyclical.

Right?

And when the pendulum swings too far to the left, there's a backlash.

Same for the other side.

So I mean I we're we're constantly talking about immigration now.

And now we're talking about people who are actually here as not being legitimately here.

Right.

Or American enough or American enough.

Yeah.

And the other thing seems to come to mind for me, even if you don't overtly say it is.

So you go back, whether it's the Franklin quote or whether it's the way Irish immigrants were treated or Italian immigrants were treated, on and on it goes.

But you sort of wonder, why do groups and I'm not trying to allay sort of or assign any sort of individual blame.

I'm more talking broadly, why would groups that have been oppressed, like, actually really oppressed?

Once with the passage of time they gained power, turn around and engage in that kind of oppression to others?

Yeah.

I mean, that is something that personally baffles me.

But you see, time and time again.

Right?

J.D.

Vance is a Catholic, right?

Catholicism was so despised in, in the United States in the 19th century.

It was demonized in incredibly dark, dark ways.

I just think, why don't we learn from that?

Or do we learn the wrong things from that?

You know?

Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, you know, it's it's about it's about whiteness in the way that America defines it or tends to define it.

You know, you have all these books like how the Irish became white, how the Italians became white, how the Jews became white.

Right?

That it is a process of becoming white.

There are people who live in this country who don't have the privilege of becoming white.

But in the early 20th century, late 19th century, I mean, the the the term the melting pot comes from a play by Israel's angle and in the in a in one phrase where he's talking about it, he says, all the races of Europe are coming together.

Right?

So they were all seen as different races.

I mean, I think Jews stopped using the term race to define to, to, to refer to themselves only after the Holocaust.

And we all kind of moved into ethnicity as like, a term that was used.

Now, but in the way that Franklin would have said in 1751, well, we're English descended, right?

Or we're English and we're not German.

We're not.

It's a different.

Race.

Right?

And so then you have this like push and pull where you have people saying, no, America is an Anglo-Saxon Protestant country.

And then people saying, no, it's, it's a pluralistic country.

We have all kinds of different nationalities here, and they're all providing something.

And so you have these different kind of, theorists.

I, I was looking at, the idea of melt the melting pot or, cultural pluralism.

And, you know, both of them kind of are looking for ways to make Jews have a spot in, in America.

Right?

So if you can kind of create the idea that America is made up of a lot of different types of people, then there's a place for you.

And so when I was looking at what Cantor was doing with this book, I kind of thought, you know, she is sort of functionally, it's not that there are just Jewish recipes in here, right?

There's Italian recipes, there's French recipes, there's Spanish recipes.

And, you know, on one page in the first edition, you've got matzo balls and Malik Itani on the same page.

Right.

Which I love, 1901.

And, so I felt like she was doing something really practical, like a practical culinary pluralism and not making knots sectioning these, these foods off to.

Right.

I mean, later on you have a Passover section because that's just useful to have them all in one place.

But for the most part, they're just sprinkled in with everything else.

Right.

And there's not like this is these are French recipes.

These are Spanish recipes.

These are Jewish recipes.

It's not like these are recipes from all over the world.

They are American recipes.

And they're all kind of put in the same book.

We're talking to No Trouble, whose new book is called recipes for the Melting Pot The Lives of the Settlement Cookbook.

It is telling the story of how the Settlement Cookbook came to be.

First published in 1901.

If you, like me, had never heard of it.

It is an amazing story, a story of a book that ended up selling 2 million copies, 40 print runs.

Then they kept printing it in in the 1970s.

You've said.

Is that.

Right?

The last print run was 1991, 91.

Okay.

That was sort of a bonus, like, kind of a reboot.

But the before that, the last edition that was printed, like through the Settlement Cookbook Company, the 91 edition was, like, done in collaboration with them, but they didn't actually spearhead it.

That was sort of a Simon and Schuster thing.

The 1776 is the is the last one.

I think you said the 91 cookbook was one word.

That's how you know, it was a fraud.

But no, it's right.

It's just an amazing story of of what was a collection of recipes, but it was, bigger than that, especially for Jewish Americans, Jewish immigrants who were, whether they were saying so or not, maybe looking too Americanized.

So when we come back, we're going to talk about what assimilation is in the minds of Nora people.

And, the pressures on immigrants.

And we're going to talk about some of the recipes and some of the really great stories from this book as well.

The book is available now.

It's out now.

It's a product of 14 years of work, and you can find it.

And we'll keep talking to Nora on the other side here.

Coming up in our second hour, we wrap up a week of my favorite conversations of the past decade.

Looking back at one from 2018 when we had a panel of kids talking about their reactions to technology, they did not understand technology from previous generations.

Now, this was before AI, but kids were looking back at landlines, rotary phones, all kinds of things that their grandparents used.

And you're going to hear some great stuff through the eyes of children.

Next, our.

Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Excel US Blue Cross Blue Shield, working with members to find health coverage for every stage of life, helping to make care and coverage more accessible in more ways for more people across the Rochester community.

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This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

The Settlement cookbook was something that one of the great American food.

Right.

One of the great food writers period MFK Fisher apparently viewed this as, I think Nora says, an oil covered masterpiece.

And so the settlement cookbook existed in a way that it became it gets it gets a spot in the Beard Hall of Fame.

MFK Fisher is referring to it.

A lot of people, a lot of people who aren't Jewish are loving, you know, not only the recipes, but they're passing it down generation to generation.

But to the extent that it does become a touchstone for Jewish Americans, there are interesting questions about what it what it actually did for individuals, families, often housewives.

Sydney on YouTube says instead of melting pot, which arguably means melting into an unidentifiable mush, how about a mosaic?

So let's talk about what this actually did for the the Jewish people who were picking this up.

Often women.

Not always.

And let's start with the the idea of melting pot versus a mosaic for Sydney on YouTube.

What do you think?

Well, I mean, I think the Canadians took the mosaic, versus our melting pot because there is a sense that the melting pot is just going to make everything taste the same or taste the same as the dominant culture.

Right?

Because if you've got smaller bits that are getting thrown in.

Yeah, I. Often hear it as a melting pot versus a salad.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The salad bowl.

Right?

Yeah.

When I was an American Studies major in college, we had a salad bowl journal.

So salad bowl journal.

Yeah, but but what's the I mean I don't know what's the right term or how do you think the different terms there.

I mean, I, you know, I think it is better to I mean, this is my own personal, you know, view, and it benefits me as a person.

So, you know, I can be honest about that, but I, you know, I prefer the mosaic, of course.

And I think, you know, I mean, arguments about the settlement cookbook is that, you know, it dilutes some of the flavor, and makes it to palatable.

But part of that is the use of ingredients and the context of when it came out, there was a, you know, it came out in the middle of, you know, the the rise of the, you know, home economics movement, domestic science.

And there was this sense that you could be better by eating differently, which, of course, we still do this, right.

We still say you can be a different person by eating differently.

But there was a lot of concern about adulteration, of spices.

You know, the foods of the immigrants weren't very healthy.

I mean, there is a question also, like there's like a lot of germ theory.

There's, and there's xenophobia, you know, is it is it is it one or the other?

Is it both?

Can it be both?

And so there was such, like a push to kind of tone down the flavors of, of these immigrants.

And I actually, I was just speaking with guests that you had on a few years back, if you remember, the cafeteria people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I was on their podcast, yesterday and we were talking about the book and Jeffrey.

Yes.

It's who is one of the writers of the book was saying, you know, this is what happened to our food, right?

This is what happened to Jewish food.

It became bland.

And who wants to eat this Ashkenazi, bland food?

But in the early days of immigration, everyone was like, oh my God, it's so flavorful.

It's too much, right?

So, so you know it.

You know, their their whole thing was to try to bring back the flavors of the, the original foods or whatever.

So set aside foods for ten because I want to be more specific about food in a moment.

Okay.

But in general assimilation, that's it's going to probably always be debated, especially in countries or societies that allow for immigration.

When you hear assimilation in the modern context, people say, well, we, we need more assimilation.

You made a little face there.

I mean, I have trouble with the term assimilation just in general, because a lot of times, at least in, you know, my area where I look at American Jewish history, you know, there's a lot of derision towards, Reform Judaism in its early days as being like, well, these are just Jews that wanted to fit in.

So it's just assimilation, right?

And that's from other Jews.

So.

But, I so I like, bristle at it a little bit because I prefer something like acculturation.

Right.

Like you are becoming part of this world, but it doesn't mean you are losing your own thing.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

It does.

I mean, I thought Robin Flanagan wrote a nice piece for you of ours, but yeah, in kind of telling the story of your book when it was being published and the headline said this was the this was the book that helped Jewish immigrants Americanize.

Yeah.

Do you agree with that?

I think so, I think so, yeah.

And to feel like they were part of it.

Right.

Also, it's not just, about teaching them to do it, but to making them feel like they had a place.

So.

Yeah.

And and could be part of the conversation, right, about what an American is.

And so on the food side of things.

Yes.

It's one thing to say, you know, immigrants came with with a lot, a lot more challenging spices and flavors and, and we want them to tone it down.

It's another to say, sometimes cultures, people from different cultures literally move around the globe and cannot recreate the recipes from a homeland or where they grew up.

Of course, Lidia Bastianich on this program years ago said that, you know, she always kind of laughed at the idea when people say, well, I love Italian, you know, like what?

Like, well, what do you mean?

Well, most of the time when Americans say, I love Italian food, they mean I love the Italian American representation of what we think of as Italian food.

And she said, there's nothing wrong with that.

It's just that.

And that gets created for different reasons.

Sometimes, sometimes a ostensibly Italian food was what Italian immigrants created here when they couldn't create the recipes exactly faithfully back home.

Because ingredients are different, or fruits and vegetables and spices may be different.

So you create something that's a little new and you do your best you can.

And it's kind of a fusion.

But in the dominant culture we think, well, that's Italian.

Now you got meatballs is that's.

Southern southern Italian food as translated through.

Yeah.

Right.

You know.

Right.

And a little Italy on my street.

So what's the story of Jewish recipes.

And then sort of through the lens of the settlement cookbook, how Jewish are the Jewish recipes?

How Jewish are bagels, how Jewish are pickles?

Let's talk about that.

Do we have enough time?

I know, I know.

You do this.

Okay, so the recipes in the cookbook, at least in the earlier, editions, really reflected the sort of German, or Central European, but really a German, Jewish culture.

Kander and Milwaukee is very German, right?

Milwaukee had a lot of, German influence.

So, you know, a lot of the, the pastry and the cakes and the cookies, people, I'm not a big baker, but people seem to have loved The Settlement Cookbook for its baking recipes.

Because partially because it was so seen as so, exact.

Right?

Yeah.

You know, because this is one of the first cookbooks that was like, they made the whole thing about this went through a test kitchen.

Right?

This was tested to the point where anyone can pick this book up and be an amazing cook.

Right.

And baking a scientific cooking is art.

Baking is specific.

But according to this cookbook, cooking is also specific.

So this is like the, you know, the America's Test Kitchen where like six, turns of the pepper grind, you know, like, who can cook like the.

Recipes are not long.

But I was amazed at how truly specific like every little detail was.

Right.

So, anyway, so we were like, oh, what is Jewish food?

So bagels, you know, bagels are not specifically Jewish where bagels originated, but a lot of Jews sold bagels in America and in New York.

And they became kind of they created guilds and it became a Jewish art.

Right?

It was associated with Jews.

Pickles.

Also the same, kosher dill.

It just means that there's garlic in it.

You know, it doesn't actually mean that it has a texture like there's been supervised by anyone.

You know, that's what that means.

And that also has, like, you know, shows the kind of connection that Jews have had with garlic, historically, which was also tried to be toned down at one point.

So what should I say to a friend of mine who always says, like, I, you know, when's the last time I ate a good big one slice?

I made a real Jewish bagel.

What?

What do you say to that?

You know, well, it's very nice to have, you know, you know, have Jewish and and.

Good be equated.

I mean, that's great, you know?

Thank you.

But, Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

I don't know what one would say.

Is it strange to you that, like that, knowing the history that there are going to be some people who think, like the best bagels are, you know, Jewish bagels?

I mean, you know, we'll take it where we can, but, I, you know, it's interesting the bagel, though, because the bagel, you know, in New York is Jewish.

The bagel in the rest of the country is from New York.

Right.

There are different variations.

Some people will argue that Rochester has some amazing bagels.

I have hosted a scholar who came here with an extra suitcase because his wife is from Rochester, and she demanded that bagels came from Bagel Land, and he brought them back to, Pennsylvania.

A suitcase of Rochester bagel.

Small suitcase, but still a suitcase nonetheless.

A carry on, but, so so, yeah.

And then outside of the United States, bagels are American, right?

Like, it's an American food.

So depending on where you're standing, it depends on how you see it.

Right.

Do you think Rochester has great bagels?

You know, I, I do, and I mourn the loss of brown steins.

I know that a lot of people out there make good bagels.

So I'm not going to say anything, but I that was like that was my my bagel place of choice.

When did Bernstein's close?

Officially, it closed a while back, but they had a back kitchen so that it was open only two days, and you could kind of drive up back and be like, I'm here for the pumpernickel, you know, or the like.

But they weren't.

They didn't have a storefront.

Anymore just for the if, you know, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I think they wanted lots of people to know for sure, but still, it did feel a little.

Did it close like five years ago?

Ten I think it might have been even.

I can't believe that even.

Back when I was a morning reporter on television, the videographer who I spent most mornings with, who is one of the really smart like, knows all of the cool secret handshakes.

Yeah, was like, we might have had a problem since.

Yeah, but then there was a fire in the building not long ago, I think like a year ago maybe.

And that really just ended it.

I think he, you know, he was looking to see if anybody would take over, but then that just kind of destroyed the whole business.

But anyway.

Yes.

All right.

Brownstein but I did love those bagels.

So tell me about your favorites.

I mean, when you decided you were going to write this book, you could have decided, I'm going to cook every recipe in the settlement cookbook.

I could pull a whole.

Julie.

You could do the whole Jewish.

But you didn't do that.

No, but do you have favorite.

No, no.

Okay, so here's the thing.

Here's here's the problem.

Okay.

The problem is that when I started working on it in, like, like, really working on it, I had gone vegan, so.

But before, before I became vegan, I did make my daughter's second birthday cake out of one of, like, the 1930 editions or something.

And, my, my in-laws, who are actually, like, fantastic bakers.

I don't really come from baking at all.

So it was good to have a recipe.

But my mother in law followed me around the kitchen the whole time, concerned that I wasn't using cake, flour and that the recipe didn't call for cake flour, I was like, well, it's the 1930s recipe.

There was no cake flour in the 1930s, but there was still cake, right?

So somehow people managed to make cakes without cake flour.

And it came out very, very nice.

So that was good.

The other recipe I've made from them, because I did think that while this book was coming out, like in the most recent moments, like maybe I should do some cute Instagram things with some of these recipes.

So I did choose to make, Swedish meatballs from the 1965 edition, with Beyond Beef.

And it was great.

So I highly recommend smorgasbord, especially if.

You're a food family now, though.

I mean, yeah, we are a food family.

And we've talked about it on you and the show before here.

Right.

How is that going?

For those of you that don't know, I'm married to the vegan butcher of Rochester, Rob Knight and the two of us own grass fed vegan butcher on Monroe.

It's good.

I mean, you know, it's a small business, which is which is challenging, but we have such amazing, such an amazing team that works there.

And we have such amazing customers, and it's, it's nice to be, a part of that.

And some of the, you know, the impetus behind that, the style of the butcher shop is to kind of create, like, a Jewish deli vibe.

And you've had our Reuben, I believe.

I have, and I can endorse it.

Right.

And the Reuben is such an amazing Jewish sandwich that is not kosher and was never kosher because it's cheese and meat together.

So.

And yet.

So how does that happen?

You wish sandwich.

So however.

How.

You know I mean that there's not just one way to be Jewish.

That's I think that's probably the.

Yeah, the very straightforward answer there.

But it's interesting how, the culture more widely makes assumptions of what, you know.

What Jewish food is.

And you know, what Jewish religion is not.

And the majority of the food that you think of when you're thinking of Jewish food in America is primarily Ashkenazi, which is Central and Eastern European.

And if, you know, the if the cookbook had been written later, there would probably be more Sephardic recipes, more other types of recipes.

But the overwhelming majority of American Jews even still are from Eastern Europe, you know, at or Central and Eastern Europe, they're, they're of Ashkenazi descent.

But, you know, now it's a little more diverse here.

And, so there are all kinds of different ways.

I mean, Jews are a diasporic people, so they essentially moved all over and brought their traditional recipes and then adjusted them wherever they went.

Yeah.

And so I wanted to ask something that's going to come off a little clumsy and I apologize, but to to the notion of Jews as a diasporic people.

Here's the clumsy part, partially because as a people, look, there's been a lot of conflict in human history, of course, but Jewish people have been persecuted, targeted for extinction.

Not just once.

Right.

And so occasionally, understandably suffer when trying to sort of make enclaves make their way in new places.

So I guess the clumsy question is, how important was the settlement cookbook in your eyes, sort of as a historian or a scholar to Jewish people.

It's 1901 and into the 20th century.

How important was it to Jewish identity and, sort of American Jews who knew American Jews?

You know, I was reading a lot of kind of notes that people wrote to Mrs.

Kander.

And, she was this she and I, and I'm speaking just in Milwaukee, because that's where the I think direct effect of the cookbook felt, you know, was felt the most, and people were so grateful for her.

You know, you kind of think that this might be something that would have been looked at as very paternalistic, you know, like just very much like the oh, the the acculturated Jews.

No better than these new immigrants.

And I mean, it was a little bit of a, hey, we don't want you guys look a lot different than we do.

And we've seemed to be in a good place here in the US.

There's not a lot of overt antisemitism.

We're afraid that so many of you looking so different, if you don't get your act together, could make us look bad.

So let's help.

You know, so there's, it's it's not a it's not an easy story, you know?

Was it that overt with candor?

Well, she actually, you know, had.

Oh, you know, she had written that she had overheard people talking, you know, in the grocery store about how there were too many Jewish children, you know, around and talking about how dirty their homes were.

And she brought this to, you know, one of the many committees she was on.

And she said, we really have to help these people.

And it's it is also a selfish motive.

You know, we should do it because it's service to humanity.

But we also should be aware that, you know, our our acceptance is, is is contingent, you know, and so this is part of a broader project.

And certainly successful though, right?

I mean, I mean, it's not the only thing that made it.

No, no no, no, but that people were grateful and, and there were there were people who said, you know, we loved her.

You can't imagine what the settlement meant to us.

We the settlement itself, not just the cookbook, but just in Milwaukee.

Yeah.

In Milwaukee that, you know, we wanted to assimilate, you know, we wanted to be part of the community.

So I'm going to cite Zadie Smith for this, and I think that might be wrong.

Okay.

But I think it was Zadie Smith and a piece that I read years ago who said that in the in the fear of, of the difference, the fear of the other, the fear of the immigrant, the push, the the opposite of that would be a push for something representing ethno states or homelands, where there is only, quote unquote, one type of person.

And I think it was Smith who said, you know, if you look at Ireland, if you look at places where there are still conflicts, you know that the gradations of different from the outside might look very small.

And yet they might still drive people to murder and to kill, in large numbers, that there's no getting to a point where we have just separated ourselves enough.

But it's now like with like only that we will always find a way if we are scared of something different, to find enough differences, even among what seemed to be similar tribes, and so we need to understand that there is no, quote unquote, cure for multiculturalism, that that is the way of the future, whether we like it or not, and that we as a society would be wise to understand you are not going to create something that feels safe and perfect and similar and same, and free of difference.

I mean, now some fact check me.

I thought that was Eddie Smith.

But anyway, it seems like something she might write.

But what do you make of the concept?

I mean, I, I couldn't agree more.

You know, again, I, you know, when I think about writing this book and some of my other work, like Jews are not a monolith, right?

Certainly not not a monolith.

And I think, you know, even.

Right, if you look at the Nordic countries that are extolled, you know, and that they're not monolithic either, and they have their own problems with, and struggles with immigration.

And, and, and and they're also divided on, you know, how much to allow to change.

But, you know, I mean, if you go to Ireland today also, that's a you go to Dublin.

It is such a multiethnic.

Yeah.

Place.

Right.

I had some of the best falafel I've ever.

Had in Dublin, Dublin?

Yeah.

About a minute left here.

First of all, as we get ready to wrap here, congratulations on a great achievement.

Thank you.

I think this book could could win basically every food writing award that there is this year because it's so interesting.

And it's not just about food.

It's not just about a cookbook, as we've been talking about.

But I want to close by asking you not to describe it in two sentences, which I promised I wouldn't do, but to describe what you do.

Hope readers get from this if they pick it up and read it.

Well, I'm a religion professor.

Yeah.

So this might be just like a strange book for me to have written in general, but, one of the things that I really love is the idea of having different texts, different kinds of texts to understand religion and religious people.

And so I, I really went into this trying to demonstrate that this book could tell us so much more about the lives of people, you know, as they lived and, and wanting to kind of defend food and the domestic as a place to learn those things.

It's not called the History of the Settlement Cookbook.

It's the lives of the settlement Cookbook.

That's right.

For a reason.

Yep.

And Nora Rebels book is out now.

Where do you want people to find it, by the way?

It's, anywhere books are sold these days, guys.

Okay.

No specific place so that you'd rather than pick it up from.

Well, I did just do, an event at siren in the sea in the South Wedge, which is a lovely spot.

I encourage you to go hit them up.

Siren in the sea.

Yeah, there you go.

But anywhere books are sold.

Recipes for the melting pot.

The lives of the settlement cookbook.

Nora rebelle.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

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