The University of North Carolina Press

344 pp., 7 x 10, 79 illus., notes, bibl., index

Published: October 2005

Cloth

ISBN  978-0-8078-2978-3

Matzoh Ball Gumbo

Culinary Tales of the Jewish South

By Marcie Cohen Ferris

A 2006 James Beard Foundation Book Award Finalist
2006 Jane Grigson Book Award, International Association of Culinary Professionals
A New York Times Notable Cookbook of 2005
A Chicago Tribune Favorite Cookbook of 2005
A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Top Cookbook of 2005

Since early colonial times in America, Jewish southerners have been tempted by delectable regional foods. Because some of these foods--including pork and shellfish--have been traditionally forbidden to Jews by religious dietary laws, southern Jews face a special predicament. In a culinary journey through the Jewish South, Arkansas native Marcie Cohen Ferris explores how southern Jews embraced, avoided, and adapted southern food and, in the process, have found themselves at home.

From colonial Savannah and Charleston to Civil War era New Orleans and Natchez, from New South Atlanta to contemporary Memphis and across the Mississippi and Arkansas Deltas, Ferris examines the expressive power of food throughout southern Jewish history. She demonstrates how southern Jews reinvented traditions as they adjusted to living in a largely Christian world where they were bound by regional rules of race, class, and gender.

Featuring a trove of photographs, Matzoh Ball Gumbo also includes anecdotes, oral histories, and more than thirty recipes to try at home. Ferris's rich tour of southern Jewish foodways shows that, at the dining table, Jewish southerners created a distinctive religious expression that reflects the evolution of southern Jewish life.

About the Author

Marcie Cohen Ferris is associate director of the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies and assistant professor of American studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is also president of the Southern Foodways Alliance.