(COOK-BOOK)

The First Kosher Cookbook in the English Language. Highly Infrequent to Appear at Auction The anonymous author has recently been identified as Lady Judith Montefiore who sought to elevate home cooking with social polish while remaining true to the tenets of the Jewish religion. Lady Judith trusted her book would attract the attention of "those ladies not of the Hebrew persuasion" by providing them with recipes for sophisticated fare that was only incidentally Kosher. Offered here are recipes for traditional Jewish dishes as well as those that reflect the larger culture in which the English Jewess lived, as could be found "at all refined modern tables." Given that fashionable Victorian tables were groaning boards of prohibited foods, including elaborate combinations of dairy and meat, shellfish, and pie crusts made with lard, Lady Judith had a tall task.Perhaps more important than the recipes is the fact that Montefiore served a message that one can be "genteel without being Gentile." Married to financier and philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore and related to the Rothschild Family, Judith Montefiore belonged to what historian Todd Endelman calls England's "upper-upper-middle-class." Although Jews were not allowed to sit in Parliament until the Emancipation Act of 1858, they enjoyed all other rights and certainly a higher social status than anywhere else in Europe. (Source: Linda Kulman "Fine Dining," www.nextbook.org)