The editors carefully dissociate themselves from the iconoclastic opinions here expressed by Harry Gersh.

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My mother was a bad cook. I realize this is a treasonable statement—treasonable to her memory and to one of our most hallowed traditions. But, unhappily, it is true.

In my defense let me say that it took me years to discover it, further years to admit it even to myself. “Like mother used to make” are words of great power; and time is a better sweetener than sugar. As the years pass, the remembered meats become juicier, the doughs fluffier, the grease is cut away. But there are certain facts that are tougher than memory, more stubborn than sentiment. Mother was a bad cook.

When the thought first struck me, I was shocked. Ma’s cooking is enshrined in Jewish tradition, as well as in American folklore. Thousands of pretty pictures in magazine ads, subways, and billboards had taught me that motherhood was a higher cooking diploma than a ruban bleu. Brillat-Savarin was good, but he wasn’t a mother. Even restaurants, competing with mother, eased the treason by boasting of “home cooking.”

At first I thought that it was only my mother who was at fault. She had some personal failing or was poor at learning or didn’t have the knack. After reaching the age of eating at friends’ homes, I discovered that their mothers weren’t so good either. As the “old country” backgrounds of the various mothers swung south from Latvia to Bessarabia, the spicing would change, but the food didn’t. Now and then I came across an emancipated mother who had switched from zauer zaltz to lemon. It made no difference.

As my years increased, I grew bolder. I searched for causes. I could not dismiss the ads. They were gospel. So it must be the fault of the individual cook. I was not yet bold enough to question the entire school of Jewish cookery. By watching carefully I discovered that there were two classes of meals. First there were the geshmake meals. These were for holidays, Friday evenings, Sunday afternoons, and for guests. They included four different kinds of what the Italians call pasta, grain products; two meats; one or two rubbery glands or organs. The second class was the daily meals, composed of “healthy dishes”—boiled meat, boiled vegetables, boiled soup. The first meal was indigestible, heavy, greasy. The second was tasteless. There was a third class, too, the hurry-up meals and the meals for the times when the digestive system revolted. Then we got milchediks, cheeses, and sour cream dishes.

The standard or basic Jewish home meal, which we ate day in, day out, barring shabbas and yomtov, started with a forshpeiz. Some leftover gefilte fish did nicely, or if that meichel was all gone by Saturday, some chopped eggplant, marinated fish, or choppedliver. Then came the meat. For some reason the meat course was always based on a “good piece mittel-chuck.“ This cut is almost unknown to American butchers. Maybe it grew only on those animals fated for kosher killing. It was coarse-grained and, however lengthily boiled, it took a lot of chewing.

Then came the soup. Yes, in hundreds of thousands of Jewish homes in America during the first two decades of this century soup came after the meat. How else could you wash down the meal? Then dessert, boiled too—but of that more later. And then a second washing down, this time with tea. Boiling hot, and in a glass, of course.

To the occasional mild complaint about heaviness or lack of taste, my mother would say, “What can be bad with it, fresh meat, fresh vegetables, clean water? What can be bad?”

I didn’t know.

I worked out sound economic and social reasons to explain the inclusion of some meats in the menu. In the old countries most Jews were poor, dietary laws restricted choice, etc., etc. And in this country there was the fact that “the store” had first claim on the time of most ma’s, and this, perhaps, made boiled dishes—which didn’t require watching—inevitable. But that didn’t explain why our mothers made a virtue of rubbery spleens, lungs, intestines. Chewing gum was less harmful and it had candy on the outside, too.

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On the days when the shortcomings of the cooking or baking became too obvious, my mother had a standard answer. Everyone’s mother had the same alibi. “It’s the stove,” they would say. The genius of American industry to the contrary, there has never been a good, dependable gas range in the American home. I’ve heard the same complaint from a hundred practitioners of Jewish “home cooking.” What was wrong with the stove, I never found out. The gas burned brightly, the valves regulated the heat, the oven had no leaks. But the stove was no good.

Cans were also objects of dark suspicion. They were poisonous. And if they weren’t poisonous, they gave food a bad taste. Not all cans. Canned salmon and tomato herring were allowed. Economic determinism, probably. Canned vegetables or soups? Terrible. Mother belonged to the modern school. She used canned tomato soup. Only Campbell’s, of course. And only for the making of a special tomato and cabbage borscht. When this doubtful ingredient was used, extra precautions were taken. It was common knowledge that as soon as a can was opened a powerful poison was released that would seep into the can’s contents from the sides. Therefore, whatever was in a can had to be taken out with the greatest dispatch. This held for the allowable cans, too, the salmon and tomato herring. When it was time to open a can, the table cloth was pushed back from a corner of the table. A plate or pot was placed close to the can. Then the can-opener was jammed into the cover and the can hurriedly jimmied open. As soon as the opening was large enough to see the contents, they were scraped out. Then mother would take the empty can to the window and peer into it doubtfully. To this day when given canned beer, I sip with suspicion. The insides of the can are sometimes black.

These home-cooked Jewish meals gave rise to a standard Jewish home pharmacopeia. Included were seltzer, bicarbonate of soda, Seidlitz powders, and citrate of magnesia. Public belching was, of course, forbidden. Except for rich uncles and grandfathers. But the tradition of the efficacy of the belch as a digestive aid was maintained. Hence the patented recipes. After a heavy meal, the adults would wander, one by one, to the bathroom. This treatment wasn’t spoken about. People knew and took care of themselves. They would swallow the foaming drink and come out eased. When I was sixteen and highly conscious of the process, I used to hold my breath during the time between the ending of the spoon’s tinkle and the belch.

The homegrown refuyehs were not taken haphazardly. Seltzer was for casual use between meals and for mealtime drinking, as a digestive aid, a warding off of trouble. Bicarbonate was for heartburn—real, imaginary, or “I shouldn’t get it.” Seidlitz powders were the digestive cure-all. They were efficacious in the treatment of any pain or discomfort between the chin and the groin. Citrate of magnesia was reserved for anything that could be classified as really sick. After citrate came the doctor.

Because of this constant awareness of the anticipated consequences of poor, under, over, or just plain eating, the desserts were designed for therapeutic effect. The recipes were traditional. My grandmother used them exactly as they had been handed down to her from her grandmother. Desserts had to be stewed fruit, preferably stewed dried fruit. Stewed prunes were the favorite weekday last course. The basic formula for this dish was universal, regardless of background. Litvak stewed prunes tasted the same as Rumanian stewed prunes. They were stewed prunes, no further description necessary. For special occasions—Friday evenings, holidays, guests—the recipe was broadened to include dried pears and apricots. For the well-to-do there were days when the dessert was stewed dried pears and apricots without the prunes. But this was plain ostentation.

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Eventually, after much searching of soul and reckoning of cost, I faced it. In the interest of truth, I would have to accuse the two most sacred concepts in our creed—Jewish mothers and Jewish superiority. I had found out that my mother was not the only Jewish mother who couldn’t cook. Joe’s mother wasn’t any better and Irving’s was definitely worse. Research along Philadelphia’s South Fifth Street and New York’s Delancey Street bore out the traitorous conclusion. Jewish cooking in general was awful.

To be sure, this revelation did not necessitate the setting up of picket lines or the printing of leaflets or even the reading of papers before learned societies. It was merely something to be sadly accepted, like most unpleasant truths.

But truth is a hard taskmaster. It drove me to seek confirmation from my friends. In many cases, these friends quickly became enemies and soon I was asking questions of enemies who had never been friends. But I did find confirmation. Some gave it sadly, some bitterly, some brazenly, and some from behind guilty hands. Some preferred New England, some French, and some Chinese, but they all preferred something to mama’s home cooking.

To be sure, the picture was not all black. The usual answer was, “The meals were pretty bad, except for. . . .” Everyone remembered some great delicacy that only his mother or grandmother could make. Even I, apostate that I was, remembered some things with delight. Unfortunately, these remembered delicacies were not part of the weekly bill of fare nor even spécialtiés de la maison. They were, for the most part, special holiday dishes made once or twice a year, and absolutely impossible to get during the remaining fifty-one weeks.

Now I am a man who likes fried matzoh. My father liked fried matzoh and my sister liked fried matzoh. But we could eat fried matzoh only during Passover. We had chumetzdike matzoh the rest of the year. We used it for soup, instead of crackers, for jam, for lots of things. But we couldn’t get fried matzoh except for Pesach.

A man I know has an unwholesome, almost sexual passion for chopped eggs. Not the tasteless stuff that comes as “a choice” to pickled herring on the appetizer list of a Jewish restaurant, but the real pesachdike chopped eggs with onions and chicken fat and a certain air. This dish also was reserved for one week during the spring. Yet eggs were plentiful and onions cheap and chickens well padded in other seasons.

Hamantoshen. I remember real Purim hamantoshen. Not the bread-dough triangles stuffed with gooey poppy seeds that disgrace the windows of Bronx bakeries. I mean hamantoshen in small tricornes of crisp, crumbly dough full to bursting with genuine puhvedle. Puhvedle that caused fights among the children as to who would lick the spoon, puhvedle made of prunes and nuts and strange, secret things. These hamantoshen were not bound by dietary laws. They were happy, joyous commemorative cakes. But ask for them in September and mother had an answer: “Meshuge darf men zein.”

Some of the good things from mother’s kitchen were monthly or even weekly affairs. These, too, were bound about with tradition. Take strudel, for instance. Strudel is something that only a grandmother can make. It is a pastry, a confection, a dream of ambrosia, but more earthy. But only a grandmother can make it. No biologist has discovered the chemical or hormone change that takes place when a grandchild is born and ripens when the child is able to eat strudel. It is just there. Countless mothers have watched as many grandmothers go through the processes that evolve into strudel. They have measured and timed and written down. But to no avail. Mothers cannot make strudel.

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We were unfortunate. Other kids had grandmothers living with them, some had them around the block or across town. My grandmother lived a hundred miles away. Three or four times a year she would come to visit, carrying her own dishes because she didn’t trust the milchedik and fleishedik differentiations in our house. She loved her grandchildren, but I think she came to make strudel. After the grandchildren were inspected and kissed, the children berated, and the tea and lemon sipped down, she would start the strudel. Grandma would roll up the sleeves of her shabbasdike dress, put on a clean white apron (colored or figured ones were bad for baking), and begin the grandmotherly task, spreading white flour on a board table, arranging a battery of bowls and boxes, and assigning the lesser tasks of shelling nuts, washing raisins, and paring apples. Slowly the delicacy would take form.

My mother would be moving nervously about all this time. It was her job to supervise the lesser aides and keep watch over grandmother’s work. She didn’t know what I knew. She thought it was a question of knowing ingredients and amounts and techniques. I could have told her. They weren’t important. She would be able to make strudel too. But not yet. . . .

Lekach and sponge cake were within a mother’s domain. Occasionally a grandmother would play around with these simple sweets, but that was only showing off or taking up the slack for an ill or overworked mother. Normally we judge baking or cooking by taste. Not sponge cake. This Friday specialty was spread before visitors and relatives during the weekend. The women guests would look at it critically. Each visiting female would pick up a piece and weigh it in her hand. Some would nod their heads up and down and some would shake them across. “It’s nice and light” was the accolade. “It’s not as light as last time” was the black hood. Mother, waiting apprehensively, would be ready with the second test. “A dozen eggs it took,” she would offer. The judges would narrow their eyes to check the color of the cake and shake their heads again. “A dozen eggs. Fine. Fine.”

Lekach was the other Friday evening goody. This nice honey cake was best described as something of which last week’s version was better. What the original tasted like only the Lord knew and only he would have been good enough to eat it. Each week it was quite palatable and each week it was described as “Not as good as last week’s.”

One thing sponge cake and lekach had in common. They were the most fragile concoctions on earth. Once placed in the oven, the entire house was alerted. No walking, no sitting heavily, no closing of doors, no sneezing, no loud talking. Our oven could take the slightest sounds or jars, pick them up, translate them into tremendous shock waves and beat these waves against the cake. A child entering the house while baking was in progress would be met by mother on tiptoes with her finger before her lips and a whispered admonition. If, God forbid, a door slipped out of your hand, mother would come down on her heels, spread her arms, and look beseechingly upward. The second noise would cause her to wail, “Farlossen dem lekach.” A third noise and she would let loose, “In drehrd detn lekach.” That was serious.

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It might have been the stress placed upon the few sweets at home or it might have been the reaction from home cooking that made us haunt the corner candy-store.

Accordingly, and by a not too subtle dialectic, any account of Jewish cuisine should include a supplementary note on the traditional supplement to our diet—candy from the candy store.

For a penny we had a wide choice. To my mother there were only two choices: “a nice piece chocolate,” or “poison.” But she didn’t know. She had lost the knowledge of candy by having children just as she hadn’t achieved the knowledge of strudel by not yet having any grandchildren. We were the mehven, the authorities, on candy.

The one-for-a-cent had subdivisions, too. There were the good candies, nationally advertised, their size cut down by the cost of advertising, their flavor weakened by the food-and-drug acts. These included Mary Janes, Tootsie Rolls, Hersheys. The second group was more fascinating. We could get a tin dish full of pink taffy and a small tin spoon. The tin spoon always bent and broke before all the taffy was gouged out and we would have to suck and scrape with our teeth. When I went home with a cut lip my mother couldn’t immediately give me the “fighting with shkutzim“ slap because I might be deserving of the “eating poison” shove.

Then there were long, two-foot strips of paper sprinkled with candy dots. The candy dots were in pink and green and were evenly spaced in two rows. They never came off the paper cleanly. With each dot we had to eat a small circle of paper. No one died from it.

I had three favorites. For my money the best buys included caramels, large black ones at three-for-a-penny and small paper-wrapped red and tan ones at seven-for-a-penny. These were movie fare. For ball playing and general sport use, sour balls were best. They kept well in pants pockets and they lasted a long time. The pocket mice that would stick to the surface of sour balls came off clean with one swipe of the tongue. In exotic moods, my penny went for burnt marsh-mallow. We could get two bananas of hard marshmallow, one white, one pink, or a Santa Claus of the same candy. With this sale we were entitled to one kitchen match. With the match we charred the outside of the marshmallow and ate the gooey drippiness, black and all.

To arouse the gambler’s instinct and to ripen us for the baseball pool tickets and the ponies when we grew older, there were the chances. They were good. For babies there were grab bags. For that same single medium of exchange, the penny, you could get a small paper bag filled with stale, broken sweet crackers, an odd piece of candy, a marble. These were good for movies too, but we didn’t buy them openly after we passed six. Then there were the box chances. This device included row on row of small chocolate-covered creams. We would put our penny on the counter—penny first was obligatory in this transaction—and study the chocolates. The trick was to pick one that looked a little different, that had a bubble of chocolate sticking up or a small indentation. Some superstitious kids counted out, three down and three across or eeny-meeny. The choice made, we would slowly, carefully break the candy across the middle. If the inside was white, well, we had a piece of candy. If it was chocolate colored, we got a nickel-size bar. If it was red, then the heavens opened—we got a large Easter egg.

The “pull” involved real gambling. This game needed a crowd. No kid ever took a pull without calling the entire gang to watch. The gambler would approach the counter and demand in a loud, manly voice, “I want a pull.” Then he laid his penny on the counter. The storekeeper would reach under the counter and bring up a fistful of long slim pieces of cardboard. One end of the cardboard was blank, the end he kept hidden in his hand had a number on it. After agonized debate and wishing and consultation, the choice was made and one cardboard sliver was pulled out of the hand. If the number of the paper ended in five, the gambler got a small Easter egg; if it ended in zero, a large Easter egg; if it ended in two zeros, a large doily-decorated box of candy. . . .

That’s how it was in our house and on our street. The mind forgets, but the stomach remembers.

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