One of the famous pieces of jewish cuisine is the latke – or potato pancake – that is a staple of many jewish tables on the festival of Hanukkah, and you’d be forgiven for assuming that they were jewish in origin when in truth just like gefilte fish (1) and lox; (2) they are in fact non-jewish in origin.
As Emily Paster puts it:
‘Most people assume that latkes have always been made from potatoes, but in fact, potatoes are a relatively recent addition to the Hanukkah culinary tradition. Potatoes are a New World food, meaning that no-one in eastern or western Europe were eating potato anything before the 1500’s. Moreover, it took several centuries before the people of Europe overcame their skepticism about many of the foods from the Americas, including potatoes. Indeed, potato latkes only became popular in the mid 1800’s when Polish and Ukrainian farmers began planting potatoes – after a series of crop failures – as a inexpensive and easy-to-grow alternative to grains.
Would it blow your mind if I told you that the original latkes were made of cheese? But they were. In fact, the tradition of eating fried pancakes or fritters for Hanukkah comes from Italy, where the pancakes were originally made from ricotta cheese.
Latkes made from cheese are not so strange when one learns that, since the Middle Ages, there has been a custom (or minhag) of eating dairy foods on Hanukkah to honor the Jewish heroine, Judith. According to the ancient tale - which is much loved but not even part of the Hebrew bible for reasons too complicated to relate - Judith helped to secure an important military victory by plying an Assyrian general, Holofernes, with salty cheese, which made him thirsty. When the general passed out from all the wine he drank, Judith beheaded him and saved her town from certain destruction. During the Middle Ages, the story of Judith became associated with Hanukkah and thus the custom of celebrating the holiday with dairy foods was born.’ (3)
Rich Tenorio adds some additional necessary depth to Paster’s point of origin in Italy for the latke writing that:
‘According to some food experts, the Hanukkah latke dates back to 13th-century southern Italy. It was a ricotta cheese pancake — sans potato — and unlike its Ashkenazi counterpart, the Sephardic creation wasn’t even called latkes.
These cheese pancakes were called cassola when the recipe was brought to Rome after Sephardim traveled north from Spanish-controlled southern Italy in 1492 following their expulsion at the onset of the Inquisition.
[…]
Avey identifies key developments in the history of the ricotta pancake recipe. In 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain ordered the country’s Jews to convert to Christianity or face expulsion, which also applied to Jews in the Spanish territory of southern Italy. Jews who left southern Italy brought their ricotta pancake recipe to Rome; it became cassola in the Eternal City and spread throughout northern Italy.
Several centuries later, Avey explained, events in Eastern Europe contributed to the eventual overshadowing of ricotta pancakes on Hanukkah when multiple crop failures in Poland prompted a mass planting of potatoes.
“These hearty vegetables helped to sustain the Polish population through the devastating crop failures, and they became a major source of nutrition for Ashkenazi Jews,” Avey writes. “Many recipes were adapted to utilize potatoes — including as latkes!”
“After some initial resistance, the potato pancake gained respectability and took its place in the pantheon of Jewish foods… Since potatoes were much cheaper than wheat flour or cheese, potato latkes became the most widespread eastern European Hanukkah pancake,” wrote Marks in his “Encyclopedia of Jewish Food.”
Avey noted, “The tradition followed Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants to the United States, where potato latkes firmly took hold.” She added, “Latkes also became popular in Israel, where several other types of fried treats were celebrated by Sephardic Jews, including keftes [vegetable fritters] and bunuelos, or bimuelos [a type of doughnut].”’ (4)
While Michael Tanenbaum adds:
‘The 14th-century Rabbi Kalonymous ben Kalonymous, who became well-known in Italy, associated cheese pancakes as a Chanukah food in one of his poems, possibly connecting it to the story of Judith.
Inspired by this connection, the latke really took off as a ricotta cheese pancake called cassola. Sephardic Jews fleeing the Spanish Expulsion in Sicily brought cassola to Rome in 1492. These cheese pancakes were be fried in olive oil, in commemoration of the miracle of the oil used to light the menorah in the Temple.’ (5)
Now the problem with this narrative is that it does three things very badly: it bungles the origin of the cheese pancake in Italy, completely misstates the history of the jews in southern Europe and then connects these two silly claims directly with the potato latke of Eastern Europe.
The first problem is that Tanenbaum implies that Rabbi Kalonymous ben Kalonymous (actually Rabbi Kalonymus ben Kalonymus ben Meir) was resident in Italy which is complete cobblers because Kalonymous was actually from the city of Arles in France although he did go to Rome for an unknown amount of time but spent most of his life in the vicinity of Arles and pleaded the case of the Roman jews to Pope John XXII in 1321 at Avignon. (6)
Kalonymous was in fact one of the first recorded jewish transsexuals as he explicitly wanted to have been born a woman and may have in fact dressed as one. (7) I will be covering Kalonymous in a separate article, but for our purposes the key point here is that while Kalonymous did have experience in Rome; he is our first recorded reference of cheese pancakes being a jewish food sometime in the early fourteenth century.
The problem is the chronology of Kalonymous’ mention of cheese pancakes as a Hanukkah dish in the early 1300s means that the expulsion of the jews from Sicily narrative where - due to the expulsion of the jews from Spain in 1492 by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella and Sicily then being a Spanish territory - the expelled jews of Sicily take the cheese pancake north to Rome which then becomes the Roman-jewish dish ‘Cassola’ – not to be confused with the very different ‘Cassoeula’ from Milan which is similar to the French dish ‘Cassoulet’ which jews have also tried to falsely claim they created – (8) simply doesn’t work because either Kalonymous is referring to a cheese pancake from the Iberian peninsula (he also spent some time in Catalonia in Spain), France or Rome but not Sicily.
This means that the chronology offered is simply incoherent as no one seems to know where the cheese pancakes referred to by Kalonymous were from and no one seems to want to look, but instead jewish authors cite Kalonymous’ remark in the early fourteenth century and then incoherently start talking about how it was introduced by Sephardic jew migrating to Rome after 1492.
Tanenbaum, Tenorio as well as Tori Avey all make this mistake and just run off into the sunset warbling about 1492 which is just… well… stupid. This is in part because they aren’t citing their own opinion, but rather a very garbled version of that of Gil Marks in his ‘Encyclopaedia of Jewish Food’ where he claims explicitly that the origins of the latke in the cheese pancake are Italian not Spanish nor French. (9)
The problem with this is that Marks leaves out the likely origin of the cheese pancake mentioned by Kalonymous in the form the Greek ‘Staitites’ which was a Greek wheat pancake that was eaten with cheese which is mentioned circa 200 A.D. by Athenaeus of Naucratis in his ‘Deipnosophistae’. (10)
And guess who ruled Sicily before the Romans?
You guessed it: the Greeks.
What Marks also doesn’t mention is that: the Romano-jewish dish cassola probably comes from something like the traditional dish of ‘Soffiatini’ (sometimes ‘Soffiantini’) from southern Italy, which is a savoury cheese pancake made from mozzarella. (11)
This something is probably an early version of ‘Torta di ricotta’ which is first documented around the same time as cassola in the northern Italian cities which Kalonymous was likely familiar with and also happens to be a Sicilian treat known as ‘cassata’. (12)
The key you see is that cassola is made specifically out of ricotta cheese and ricotta cheese was first introduced to Italy by the ancient Greeks as Lara Abrahams notes:
‘Although the exact origins of ricotta are not clear, it is believed to have been first made right here in Sicily. Some believe the ricotta-making process, as well as its shaping, may have been influenced by ancient Egyptian techniques. Either way, it’s evident that the Greeks, who ruled Sicily from the 8th to the 3rd centuries BC, fell in love with ricotta, and incorporated it into their stories and culture: Homer, who was much inspired by the island, wrote in the Odyssey of the giant cyclops Polyphemus, who is making ricotta when protagonist Ulysses encounters him.’ (13)
Abrahams’ point is simple: the ancient Greeks in Sicily were making and using ricotta cheese in foodstuffs long before jews arrived in Sicily or even the Italian peninsula. A good example is that Athenaeus of Naucratis – who we have just met - and Callimachus of Alexandria mention that a Greek named Aegimus (possibly of Velia in southern Italy) described the art of making ‘cheesecakes’ in a book on the subject in the 5th century B.C. (14)
They were also making pancakes named ‘Teganitai’ – which could be either savoury or sweet - in Greece and Sicily from even before this time. (15)
It is thus completely unreasonable to suppose that Kalonymous’ cheese pancakes are originally a jewish creation because they had almost certainly been copied from the local non-jewish population that had been eating pancakes and cheese/ricotta together (and making pancake-like dishes out cheese) since circa the eighth century B.C. and further the idea that the Roman-jewish dish cassola comes from the expulsion of the jews from Sicily in 1492 is also nonsensical for much the same reason.
What we are seeing here in truth is history written backwards in order to write jews into it and ascribe a jewish origin to latkes when in fact they are almost certainly Greco-Italian in origin!
Now moving past this lengthy digression into the origins of the cheese pancake; we can finally move to the potato latke that we are far more familiar with.
The assumption made by Paster as well as by Tenorio and Avey is that cassola was the precursor of the latke in Eastern Europe and while this is possible; it is a rather late date for such culinary transmission since in their timeline cassola only becomes a thing after the 1492 and then is transmitted via some unknown and unstated vector to the jewish communities of Eastern Europe.
Where-in we have the bizarre belief exhibited by Tenorio and Avey that the jews of Poland and the Ukraine were frying ricotta cheese pancakes on Hanukkah on a regular basis – cheese from Italy was notoriously expensive and difficult to transport as we known from the diary of Samuel Pepys which mentions his very expensive wheel of Parmesan cheese that he took great pains to bury to try and save it from the Great Fire of London in 1666 – (16) which either assumes the jews of Poland and the Ukraine were all millionaires – relatively-speaking – or they were somehow able to import ricotta into Poland cheaply while all the non-jews could not.
This then is clearly nonsense, and the likelihood is that the jews of Eastern Europe were simply frying another form of cheese as Marks implies by suggesting the cheese pancake was already known to the Ashkenazim in the 1300s (17) to make cheese pancakes or weren’t doing it all and simply replaced it with something else.
Now we encounter the next part of the story where-in the potato pancake – or the latke – becomes popular among Ashkenazi jews in Germany, Poland and the Ukraine.
Paster styles it incorrectly thus:
‘Potato latkes only became popular in the mid 1800’s when Polish and Ukrainian farmers began planting potatoes – after a series of crop failures – as a inexpensive and easy-to-grow alternative to grains.’ (18)
The truth is – as Marks notes – that the potato latke actually comes from German cuisine which jews in Germany then copied and transmitted onto the rest of Ashkenazi jewry circa after a series of crop failures in Poland and the Ukraine. (19)
Marks is quite clear about this when he writes how:
‘The first Europeans to fully embrace the potato were the French in the late eighteenth century, made desperate due to the famine in the wake of the Revolution. The Germans joined the potato bandwagon and by the end of the century they were producing potato flour and a variety of dishes, such as dumplings, salads, soups, and pancakes, variously called kartoffelpfannkuchen (“potato pancakes” in southern Germany), reibekuchen (“grated cakes,” made from coarsely grated potatoes and frequently omitting any flour and egg), rievkooche (in the Rhineland), and kartoffelpuffer (in Berlin, made with finely grated potatoes).
Germans Jews also began making potato pancakes, although for Hanukkah per se.’ (20)
And then goes on to explain that:
‘After some initial resistance, the potato pancake gained respectability and took its place in the pantheon of Jewish foods, becoming in eastern Europe the kartofel latke or simply latke. Since potatoes were much cheaper than wheat flour or cheese, potato latkes became the most widespread Eastern Hanukkah pancake.’ (21)
Thus, we can see that despite the desperate attempts by jews such as Tenorio and Avey to claim that the potato pancake – or latke – had a jewish origin: it was actually a German dish and its origins are even earlier than Marks allows dating at least the 1750/1760s with King Frederick the Great of Prussia’s (more properly King Frederick II of Prussia) famous ‘Potato Decree’ of 1756 where-in Friedrich sought to popularise the potato as an efficient agricultural crop which necessarily included creating and popularizing easy recipes that his subjects could use to cook their new potato crop that created ‘Reibekuchen’ and ‘Kartoffelpuffer’ in Prussia which then in turn was copied by jews into what became latkes. (22)
Thus, we can see that the origin of the cheese latke is Greek and the more common potato latke is German: both were copied by jews who are now trying to take credit for inventing them!
References
(1) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-invention-myths-gefilte-fish
(2) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-invention-myths-lox
(3) https://www.cheeseprofessor.com/blog/cheese-latke-hanukkah
(4) https://www.timesofisrael.com/were-the-original-hanukkah-latkes-really-ricotta-pancakes-from-italy/
(5) https://www.consciouslykosher.com/blog/the-colorful-history-of-the-chanukah-latke
(6) https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9173-kalonymus-ben-kalonymus-ben-meir
(7) Steven Greenberg, 2004, Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition’, 1st Edition, University of Wisconsin Press: Madison, pp. 118–121
(8) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-invention-myths-cassoulet
(9) Gill Marks, 2010, ‘Encyclopaedia of Jewish Food’, 1st Edition, John Wiley: Hoboken, p. 703
(10) Athenaeus of Naucratis, ‘Deipnosophistae’, 646b
(11) https://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/recipes/italian-savoury-pancakes-soffiatini/
(12) https://www.thecookscook.com/article/the-history-and-evolution-of-torta-di-ricotta-ricotta-tart
(13) https://italysegreta.com/ricotta/
(14) Darra Goldstein (Ed.), 2015, ‘The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets’, 1st Edition, Oxford University Press: New York, p. 32
(15) https://historydollop.com/2018/08/19/teganitai-ancient-greek-pancakes/
(16) On the jewish responsibility for the Great Fire of London see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/did-dutch-jews-start-the-great-fire
(17) Marks, Op. Cit., p. 702
(18) https://www.cheeseprofessor.com/blog/cheese-latke-hanukkah
(19) Marks, Op. Cit., pp. 704-705
(20) Ibid., p. 704
(21) Ibid., p. 705
(22) https://www.stuttgartcitizen.com/lifestyle/reibekuchen-potato-pancakes/