Recently I was asked on X/Twitter about whether the much loved cut of beef – the brisket – is in fact jewish so – as is my want – I immediately dived down a rabbit hole about all things to do with brisket and predictably enough the questioner’s fears proved incorrect albeit I had to go down a few rabbit holes to work it out.
What you might call the ‘popular view’ is that brisket does indeed have its origins among the Ashkenazi jews of Eastern Europe with one website declaring that:
‘The origin of Brisket may not be what you expected as it didn’t begin with bbq-loving country folks; rather, it began as a traditional kosher food within the Jewish community.
Brisket was and is still used as a special cut of meat on Jewish holidays such as Hannukah, Shabbat, and Passover. The cut of beef was decided to be celebratory and important due to its location. Brisket is found in the cow’s front breast, making it kosher for Jews to consume.’ (1)
The problem with this is that the first recorded mentioned of brisket being cooked and eaten by jews is from the 1700s (2) and the jews ate this as a slow cooked stew of a sort – the traditional way of cooking brisket as it happens – but jews actually didn’t invent this.
In fact, what they were doing was copying German cuisine which included numerous similar dishes that cook brisket but most of them are a variant of the concept of ‘Bierfleisch’ (‘Beer Meat’) where Germans would eat a stew made from slow-cooked brisket and pair it with traditional German beer. (3)
The oldest mention of a ‘Bierfleisch’ recipe using brisket is ‘Salzburger Bierfleisch’ (‘Salzburg Bier Meat’) which is first documented in the 1500s – some a full two hundred years before the first jewish mention of the use of brisket as a specific cut of meat in dishes – and is linked to Salzburg’s local nickname as the city of the ‘Stierwascher’ (‘Bull Washers’). (4)
Given the Ashkenazi jewish community’s presence in – and close links to – medieval/early modern Germany and Austria; it would thus seem fairly obvious that the jews simply copied the German culinary concept of ‘Bierfleisch’ and claimed it as their own.
Thus, we can see that contrary to ‘received wisdom’ the use of brisket as a specific cut of meat in the culinary world originates with the Germans and not the jews.
References
(1) https://allegromarinade.com/history-of-brisket/
(2) https://onehotmamas.com/a-history-of-brisket-from-passover-to-texas/ and https://wearetaamim.com/sauls-smoked-brisket/
(3) For example, see: https://www.craftbeering.com/beer-braised-beef-brisket-stew-with-mushrooms-bierfleisch/
(4) https://www.salzburg.info/en/magazin/art-culture/salzburger-bierfleisch-and-the-legend-of-the-bull-washers_a_445970