Is this JEWISH or POLISH food?!? 

We Jews have a love/hate relationship with Poland... and vice versa... the Yiddish saying "You can take the Jew out of Poland, but you cannot take Poland out of the Jew" is true... Several of my uncles served in the Polish Army... 11 of my aunts/uncles were martyrs during the Khurbn... but I still feel a connexion to Poland, we speak Yiddish, we speak Kaschubian at home... Despite all, Kocham Polskę... moja krew pochodzi z Polski, jestem Żydem, który nie może opuścić Polski

For me, as a Pole, it's not that surprising. For many centuries before WW2 Jews were significant minority in Poland (including parts that are now Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine). Try dish called "Karp po żydowsku". If you're lucky, you can even find Kosher Śliwowica, which is considered by many to be the best kind ;) Enjoy you stay in Poland and SMACZNEGO :)

Kogiel Mogiel, !!! It is Jewish dish, sweet, made of sugar and raw egg yolks. I love it! I'm polish and grew up in communist Poland and since we didn't have to too many sweets in the stores, kogiel mogiel was a very good, popular dessert

Since Jews lived in many Eastern European countries they adapted their diets to the culture around them

Hi Michael, really enjoying your vids and perspective on Poland. Fun fact, the potato is actually native to the Americas and arrived in Europe post-Columbus, so most likely both Jews and Poles started eating potato pancakes at the same time, since we were already living together for quite some time at that point. I’m fascinated with Jewish history in Poland. In case you haven’t been yet, I highly recommend the Polin museum in Warsaw that details the entire history of Polish Jews.

Tyle stuleci żyliśmy razem. Było różnie ale myślę, że te wspólne lata przyczyniły się do wzbogacenia obu kultur. Przez wojnę straciliśmy coś cennego. Ja osobiście uważam, że Was tutaj brakuje. Wasza obecność nas ubogacała. Pokój z Tobą.

Hey Michael! When I visited Israel, I was so surprised to see Halva and Babka, and that people also eat sour pickles. I've never seen this food anywhere outside of Poland. Then I realized that there was a lot of migration from Eastern Europe to Israel and people brought their favorite foods with them. And also that Jewish food stayed in Poland. I'm sure there are even more examples out there. I think it would be cool if the Jewish and Polish people were more aware of their shared bits of culinary culture. At the beginning I was confused about who invented what, but I don't think it's that important. It makes me happy when I go out into the world, where most people have never heard of our dishes, and then I meet a Jew who knows some of them, and likes them too :)

Hi! I'm from Poland. About the "Latkas" - my grandma called them "Łatki" - so here it is! Sound similar :D thank you for bringing back this memory about Łatki :)

you forgot bagels. In Poland they are called obwarzanek krakowski and are sold on many street corners

as a Polish American (born in Lithuania, actually) my observation is that the foods you mentioned are pretty much common not only in Jewish or Polish cuisine, but also in Lithuanian as well..Pretty much everything you mentioned, was a staple food when I was growing up. matza was probably only exception. I knew about it, but tried it only once or twice. Potato pancakes (aka.bulviniai blynai in Lithuanian) was super popular. I had no idea that they are called "latkes" until I migrated to US. we called Chalka as Chala, maybe that is a regional name variety). And yes, it was sold in regular grocery stores.

Wait till you come at 'placek po węgiersku / góralsku / beskidzku' 😉 Kinda the plate sized latka, folded over with some kind of goulash in it 😁 The 'hungarian' variety is so popular that Polish tourists in Hungary were asking so much for it that they actually started to make them there 😁 (it's not in any way actually Hungarian, we just named it as such 😁)

The advent of potatoes came much later than the Jewish settlement in Poland. So it's safe to say the whole Poland-Lithuania got latkes at the same time. The Polish cuisine includes: Pascha for Easter, carp po żydowsku for Christmas, and cymes means something good so you'll find it as a brand of juice or baked goods. Both nations I think treat chiken soup (rosół) as a healing potion.

Also, don’t forget about Gefilte Fish! My mom made it all the time and we were not Jewish but Polish Americans (parents from Poland) So good! Still remember it! (35 years ago) Ryba faszerowana was the name she called it!

Great episode! I remember doing a Polish food tour once for a group from Israel and with each stop they said: "OK, OK, all this is fine and tasty, but it's the same stuff we ate as children (or still do). Show us some Polish food!" I guess living by one another for almost a millenium has created a lot of unspoken bonds and traditions that are actually common. I believe food is a good connector here, especially in context of the troubled history that the Jews and Poles share. Also: bagel comes originally from Krakow (first ever mentioned in historical records in the year 1610 in the Kazimierz Jewish commmunity: it was, in fact one of the first communal social help systems to mothers giving birth: a basket full of bagels was a gift for such, as stated by the Kahal of Kazimierz in that particular year). We can guess that bagels might be a Jewish comepetitor to Christian obwarzanek, that you have here at least since the 14th century. Also latkes: one theory gives the name a Slavic origin from the word "łatka" meaning a patch, like on trousers. And a potato pancake kinda looks like one. Cheers and keep on going, Michael!

I'm Polish and one of my favourite foods is chałka with butter

Lots of words in Polish comes from either Yiddish language such as: hucpa, cymes, bachor, bajgiel, belfer, ciuch, rejwach, szmonces, ślamazara, plajta. The spelling probably differs but, pronounciation should be similar.

I'm Polish and I've just bumped into this channel by coincidence , and wow, it's so interesting. 😁

Polish cuisine is a heritage of many cultures. We inherited a lot from our regretfuly gone Jewish community and so Polish Jews now living elsewhere brought some of Polish cuisine with them. I think placki ziemniaczane are Polish as well as Kraków's obwarzanki now known everywhere as bagels that Jews brought to NY.

Gęsie pipki is goose stomachs in curry sauce with lots of onions. Full on delicious, I seriously recommend you tried it. Than you did not mention cebularz - a bread bun with onions and popeey seeds which to everyone coming from Lublin like myself is a taste of childhood. It is believed to originate from Jewish bakeries. A city, worth mentioning, whose third of the population was once Jewish. All the best in your daily life here.

I am not from a Jewish family, but my grandmother had Jewish neighbors in Radom. She loved eating maca or sucharki (rusks) with a cup of hot tea or cereal coffee for second breakfast or dessert. She said that it was easily digestible, good for health, and made the stomach rest after heavy, fatty dishes based on meat, lard, onion and sauerkraut, which are abundant in Polish cuisine. As for potato pancakes, I think they appeared at a similar time in many places, as soon as the potato appeared in Europe. That was a huge potato trend :) So probably the first people to make potato pancakes were the indigenous people of South America. Poles and Jews have a lot of common history, very visible in cuisine. It's so sad that our relations are so tense, and at the moment Jewish culture and customs are known in Poland only from American films, and not from the stories of elders, school lessons or the media.

Chałka with kakałko (cocoa) is the essence of our life :D

I'm surprised you didn't mention Pączki. They are similar to Sufganiyot, and in Yiddish they are called Ponchik, which is pronounced similar to Pączek, the singular form of Pączki. Like Sufganiyot, Pączki are associated with a religious tradition, in the case of the latter, a way to use up rich ingredients before the start of Lenten fasting. Honey cake is another food with significance to each culture

In Poland “placek po cygańsku”(Roma’s style pancake) is potato pancakes with gulasch. So we have to add Roma people into mix 😂 Welcome in Central-East Europe.

Hi, welcome to Poland! I'm happy to hear you enjoyed our food :) chałka indeed is delicious and we often eat it with jam. Placki ziemniaczane are more than yummy.

Why is anyone so surprised? Women love talking with each other and sharing recipes!

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? This dilemma in the case of dishes that we eat in Polish is simple. We have been living together there for more than 1500 years, Jews were forbidden to work on the land and serve in the army, so they could not prepare their own dishes because they did not sow anything and did not harvest anything. They could only eat what Polish farmers had harvested for them and probably showed what could be done with it.

"O ile w Krakowie czy szerzej w Galicji gęsi pipek to gęsie żołądki duszone w cebuli, o tyle na terenie byłego zaboru rosyjskiego w ten sposób określa się szyjki z gęsi nadziewane wątróbkami". 😁

Letki seems to be derived from polish "placki" which means pancakes generally. Personally this is my favourite food - the ones on the picture was more german style - city of Poznan has own dialect which calls potatoes "pyry" in plurar - pyry are grated on big holes and result in more "german" occupier version in contrary to rest of Poland where potatoes are completely milled/grated, starch is removed and then fried which makes them fluffier. What I found personally interesting is the fact that another of my favourite food - cymes / tzimmes - is jewish food but it has cultural difference - jewish base it on carrots and make it sweet with fruits while poles and lithuanians make it savoury with smoked pork or beef based on potatoes; It was extremely popular in Vilnus, Kowno and Lida before world wars in both versions.

I grew up in Warsaw. My grandmother loved maca, and we always had it at home. She did tell me it was Jewish food, so it was like something Jewish that my grandma liked since her childhood. A kind of comfort food for her. She grew up as a peasant kid in the Mazovia region. Potatoes came to Poland by the end of the 17th century, so it probably entered the Polish and Jewish cuisine at the same time. It's a kind of food for the poor. Peasants didn't get to eat meat every day. Similarly, during the Communism era we used to have meat 1-2 a week, so potato pancakes were usually at least once a week for dinner. One of the most ironic Polish-Jewish food is karp po żydowsku (carp the Jewish way) which is one of our must have dishes for Christmas Eve (sic!) that I hear is called carp the Polish way in Israel. There are also various kinds of everything kosher, like kosher vodka.

Pickled herring is also a Nordic thing, not just Slavic.

Funnily when I was growing up in the ninetees in Poland, my mom used to buy me what was called a 'jewish salad' in the grocery store which I really liked. I also loved pastrami, which was available in every meat store back then. Years later I bought in London a sandwich that was called a "New York sandwich" which was filled with pastrami and 'jewish salad'. I was kind of surprised at first but then it all made sense.

I remember eating chalka all the time in Poland in the 90s, it was a better tasting, sweater bread that was halfway between white bread and a Polish doughnut. It wasn’t meant for sandwiches, but it was perfect with cottage cheese or spreadable cheese and any kind of jam or honey, then you wash it down with milk, it was perfect for that. Only thing I can compare it to now is Hawaiian bread, cuz it’s a little sweet, but chalka tasted better and looked absolutely amazing!! Gęsi pipek, never heard of it, but lit sound more like “duck neck” than anything else. Also, did you know that bagels were first made in Kraków by Jews, it’s the earliest record of bagels, if you ask me, it’s just a smaller version of chalka.

I became familiar with some Jewish food and customs while living in London and had the same thoughts upon moving to Poland. There does seem to be a lot of crossover. One you may have forgot is ćwikła z chrzanem, the kind of pink horseradish with beetroot you find on a Passover seder. In Poland you'll find this at the Easter table which has it's own collection of symbolic items. Since the product looks to be very similar, and it's eaten around the same type of year I wonder if there's a connection there.

Well there was a time history Polish and Jewish cultures were very much integrated until certain fellow from Austria.

Hello, I' Polish and I remember my grandma who prepared "podpłomyki" every Friday. Many years later I realized that podpłomyki are nothing more than matza😊

Loved hallah as a kid in the 70s with some butter on it. It was like a dessert. Or just plain, ripping piece by piece. Memories. I miss it in Canada. They might have it in Polish stores here. Hmm, gotta check.

Ja byłem mały, babcia robiła coś w rodzaju macy z reszty ciasta na kluski, kładła kawałek rozwałkowanego ciasta na rozgrzanych fajerkach i po chwili było gotowe. Mam wrażenie, że teraz się mniej je placków ziemniaczanych jak kiedyś, generalnie chyba cała dieta się bardzo zmieniła od lat 80.

As a person growing in Poland I never come across Gęsi Pipek, but maybe was not that popular in my region. Best regards and have a nice day!

Note that many foods that Sephardic Jews eat are different. So what is Jewish food depends on environment and the native culture in which Jews were immersed. So many foods of Ashkenazi Jews is not food that Jews brought from MIddle East but what was developed and borrowed in Central and Eastern Europe from Germanic and Slavic cultures. Most likely dough for challah was developed in Northern France and Germany. It is really a brioche dough. BTW challah is great for French toast.

In 1569 Poland was the most tolerant country in Europe (and still is). Historians have used the label paradisus iudaeorum (Latin for "Paradise of the Jews"). Poland became a shelter for Jews persecuted and expelled from various European countries and the home to the world's largest Jewish community of the time. According to some sources, about three-quarters of the world's Jews lived in Poland by the middle of the 16th century. (Wikipedia). There was many Jewish's entries to Poland from the beginning of 10 century. In 21 century it's hard to describe who influenced who, with polish traditional foods. My Grandma, (she had Jewish neighbors across the road) always made "macas" after she finished a bake of breads, she placed those tarts, made of the same dough as bread, in the entry of coal oven for a few minutes, we called those macas as "podplomyki". They were delicious. I have a copy of book by Eugeniusz Wirkowski, printed in 1988, named "Cooking the Polish-Jewish way". This book is available in French, Polish, English and German. For me, personally, these recipes could be very easy as polish, or jewish, or german's.

It would be nice to also discuss the origins of babka in comparison to chałka/challah. I was surprised to discover that babka, a typically Slavic food, is considered Jewish in NYC. Chałka/challah is undoubtedly Jewish. I concede that some variation of Slavic babka may have been adopted into Jewish cuisine, but it originated in Poland or other Slavic countries.

I am Polish from Jewish origin, but my family lost traditions. Maca is popular for college students, often ate with śledź on top, but I prefer with hummus. Also my family eats potato pancakes with yogurt, or I prefer with ketchup. My family has the same Maca recepie from generations.

In Radoszyce there's a regional delicacy called "kugiel". There's even a kugiel competition. I was suprised when I watched Netflix "Shtisel", where they'd eat kugiel (I was positive about it being Polish food).

Yeah, but American diaspora still live in more less the same cultural circle as Europeans. I think those similarities are even more striking when particularly Israelis visit Poland or vice versa, as Israel in Poles' common opinion is viewed as exotic/faraway country (and I guess they view us in more less the same way). Funfact #1: in every polish house you can find a bin under a sink in the kitchen. You visit your friends' home or sth, need to throw away some trash - just find a kitchen and open the cupboard under a sink - congrats, you just found a bin. What was surprising for me - this rule works just as fine for literally every home I visited when I was in Israel :D Funfact #2: Lovely Israeli couple once tried to explain Israeli politics to me. They said sth like "you know, we have Hebrew word for it, it's just a "balagan"" (or "burdel", don't remember exactly), to which I just burst out laughing, as this word comes directly from Polish and pretty much desribes polish politics just as well :D

I am a Pole and all these are a surprise to me besides maca (where there is a vague link to Jewish culture for me). The rest of them feels so Polish that I never would have thought they could be Jewish 😊

My theory is that patatoes arrived Poland when there was already big jewish community established here. So placki ziemniaczane became then common dish for Poles and Jews right from beginning.

Gesie Pipki is basically goose neck stuffed with potato, onion and sometimes meat to form a kind of sausauge. Its a variation on a theme that produced such food as kaszanka or krupniok and also the kishke that is often found in kosher delis and markets in North America. Since sausage in Poland is usually made in a pig intestine, the jews were forced to get a bit creative in finding casings for sausage type products and the skin from a long goose neck fit the bill. Goose was a quite popular food among both gentiles and the ashkenazi jews of eastern europe as it is delicious, quite large, could be kosher and unlike chickens that at the time tended to be on the scrawny side also produced quite a lot of fat that after rendering then had multiple uses as schmaltz.

It's pretty simple to decide "Jewish or Polish". You can change the question to "Jewish or local '' because Jewish people used to live in different regions during diaspora, so if the kitchen was basically Jewish, then it would be similar for Sephardic and Ashkenazy Jews but it isn't. Jewish people were always adopting local cuisine to their kosher rules, changing names of the dishes but following local recipes due to the availability of ingredients and exchange of recipes. However, "original" Jewish cuisine (whatever it was those times) probably influenced somehow the cuisine of the countries where Jews lived, and that's all.

If I remember correctly, Poland was save heaven in medical times for Jews. Some say they had 3/4 of all Jews, some say 4/5, but still they had a lot of them. Many of important Poland literature has Jews like Lalka, Wesele czy Znachor. Cultures also mix. We can see it in the city of Łódź for example. City of 4 cultures. Polish, Jewish, German and Russian. In the world there are also similar dishes, some inspired by others, some done a little differently. It’s card to say sometimes what food if from what culture as some dishes can be seen as part of one culture, but in reality are also part of other culture.

Maca is pretty popular among health freaks and/or travelers. Given modern diet and stressful lifestyle maca can help with digestion. It doesn't get expired fast so it's good when travelling And it doesn't taste that bad. Especially if you have access to tasty toppings

So glad I found your channel. I'm an Irish writer living in Poland and am fascinated by the history of Polish-Jewish culture. I found it poignant when I moved here to discover that bagels are not so common anymore (at least in my part of the country), despite their origins being in Jewish Poland. Highly recommend Eva Hoffman's book Shtetl if you haven't read it already. Wish I had discovered FestivALT before 2024 submissions closed, but I'll be sure to attend the events! -- Matthew

Jewish culture and Polish culture have intertwined for 1,000 years. I recommend the Polin museum in Warsaw. You will find traces of this interaction in the cuisines of both nations. Let's start with bagels, which were started baking by Krakow's Jews in the 17th century. It was bread given to a woman after a successful childbirth . Do not confuse them with obwarzanek krakowski, which has been baked since the 14th century. These are two different types of baked goods from Krakow. Bagels came to the USA with 19th century emigration. Etymology of the word 'pipek' 1. «something hanging or sticking out of something» 2. contemptuously 'about someone helpless, clumsy' Gęsi pipek is known in two versions: stuffed goose necks and stuffed goose stomachs. The necks are stuffed with a stuffing of grated potatoes with onion, and less often with meat (e.g. kosher beef). The stomachs are stewed in oil or goose lard with onion and garlic. Potato pancakes(placki ziemniaczane), potato cake(babka ziemniaczana) and potato kiszka(kiszka ziemniaczana) are dishes of poor peasants from the areas of former eastern Poland. It's hard to find ancient roots in potato pancakes. Potatoes became popular only in the 19th century. Remember that many poor Jews lived in eastern Poland. In the canon of Polish cuisine you will find: Jewish-style herring, Jewish-style carp in jelly, and Jewish-style stuffed carp. These are very popular dishes. You will often find them on the Christmas Eve table in Poland. It's a paradox. Sometimes you'll come across a restaurant in Czulent. Cholent, ciulent (Yid. טשאָלנט, cholnt) is a traditional meat and vegetable goulash dish of Jewish cuisine, such as ragoût, eaten on Shabbat. I could list such dishes for a long time.

Now I wonder if Latke can in any way mean łatka (i.e. patch, like you would sew on an elbow or something) they can kinda look like one if you sqyint hard enough 😁

The best fermented pickles (not vinegar) i've ever tasted were pickles bought in some kosher store in toronto. It tasted almost like the ones made by my babcia, you can't get pickles like this even in polish stores.

4:00 Put butter on it and it's cool. Or better: cream cheese,salmon and chives. I do like it. 6:05 Chanuka is much older then potatoes get known for non-native American, so it's seems having its origin in Poland or Italy. What about polish carp "karp po żydowsku"? What about "miodownik" (honey cake)?

Uwielbiam chałka, smak dzieciństwa 😊

Jews used to live in Poland for around 700 years, so it's not a surprise that cuisine would be quite common in both cultures.

I think eating buckwheat/kasza is also a good common thing to eat in both cultures ❤

I'm from Czech Republic and we also have most of these

Traditions are not as old as we are being told. Poles and Jews did not begin to eat potatoes until late 18 century so certainly potato pancakes came even later. However pancakes could have been made form parsnips or Jerusalem artichokes (also from America) that preceded in popularity potatoes in Europe but later became kind of forgotten.

This is not surprising. Slavs and Ashkenazi Jews lived together for hundreds of years and thus cultures and people mixed. Many times when I see friends who visit kosher shops in the states I see dishes that could easily be bought in a shop near my home. And does it matter who invented a particular dish? Not very much, in my opinion. What matters is that both cultures eat it and, most importantly, it tastes good to them :)

I'm from Poland and here in my region we love to eat Cebularz which people say is also Jewish food

I wouldn't go with latkas or potato pancakes (placki ziemniaczane) that far. I mean if you look at it, it must have been a food source for the poor just like Belgian (French) fries. Those potato pancakes are also popular in Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, Ukraine or Belarus. In Poland we have a dish called "Placki po węgiersku" tr. "Hungarian pancakes", which generally are potato pancakes with goulash :) That's why I used to think potato pancakes are a Hungarian thing ;)

Nothing beats onion bun in Lublin area... When I was teenager every Saturday moning. on the the way back from student disco club in Lublin we always stoped to.local bakery to get hot onion buns.. .. I also had a chance to go.to.Jewish bakery in Toronto to try to get onion buns but they do not make the same like in Poland but still very delicious.. All the best

You can get Challa in Austria, too. We call it Striezel, it's made of a slightly sweet very fluffy wheat dough with yeast. Among Gentiles, it was a traditional dish for All Saints Day when wintertime really sets in. Also, latkes are a common dish in many German regions, called Kartoffelpuffer in German. They were a traditional food for Lent and they are served with apple sauce.

Another dish present in both Polish and Jewish cuisine is barszcz/borscht. In the 1990s, my dad, who's a physician from Poland, was doing his residency in New York. Around the holidays, his Jewish co-worker called him. During their conversation, he asked my dad what are traditional Polish Christmas foods. My dad replied that there's this beet soup... and his colleague said "You mean borscht?" My dad was very surprised. For those who are not from North America like myself, in the US borscht/barszcz is considered to be a stereotypically Jewish food. Up through the early 1970s, when many American country clubs and resorts banned Jews, there were many summer resorts in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York that catered primarily to Jewish tourists. Hence, this region was dubbed the "Borscht Belt." When I tell Poles about this, they are always surprised. Then I ask them: "Have you seen 'Dirty Dancing'?" They all have (especially the women). Then I explain that this 1980s love story (which, as a dude, I found boring) is set in the Borscht Belt during the 1960s.

Almost 700 years of shared history, we lived side by side so its natural your food (Jewish) will be ours, and ours will be yours.

Placki ziemniaczane aka potato cakes love it. This is an amazing example of culture mixing among people who lived together for centuries. Plus show me a Pole who has never uttered the words "oi wei"... Speaking bout "oi wei" I was waiting for a plane from Munich to arrive at LAX. When they announced the delayed arrival I uttered "oi wei" what I heard from the back was "oi wei right we are going to be late for Bar mitzvah"

Poles and Jews lived together for more than 500 years. It shouldn't be surprising that we share so many traditions, but actually we are surprised. Some time ago I was watching The Shtisel TV series about Orthodox family in Jerusalem, and was surprised how many things remind me of my family house. Tea in glasses with metal brackets, schnytsel with mash potato and beetroot with horseradish...

In the US, BJ's Wholesale sells some Polish and Jewish food. I buy from them Challah bread, I also bought gefilte fish, Polish ham and pickled mushrooms.

Well Michael the question is who first make pancakes from potatoes: In 1536, Spanish Conquistadors in Peru discovered the flavors of the potato and transported them to Europe. At first, the vegetable was not widely accepted. Sir Walter Raleigh introduced potatoes to Ireland in 1589, but it took nearly four decades for the potato to spread to the rest of Europe.

I don't think that herring is a Slavic food. It's been eaten by people living around Baltic and North Sea. It used to be a source of a cheap protein.

This is sooo hilarious!!!😂 I just had a conversation with my Jewish neighbor about her "privatizing" all of our bread as Jewish. Challah is ubiquitous in Ukraine. We call it 'kalach'.

You have to go back into history to understand why our Polish food is mixed with Jewish food. The first small Jewish communities existed in Poland in the 13th century, later they expanded, accepting expelled Jews from all over Europe, including Germany (1346), Hungary (1349-1526 and 1686-1740), France (1394), Austria ( 1420), Spain (1492), Portugal (1497), Kiev (1886), Moscow (1891). King Casimir III the Great is considered the protector of Jews in Poland. In 1334, Casimir the Great excluded Jews from the jurisdiction of German law, from then on Jewish communities began to be directly subject to royal courts[2]. After Casimir the Great's decision to protect the safety and interests of Jews, the Kingdom of Poland became a safe haven for Jews expelled from other countries in Europe. My hometown in Poland was built by Jews. This is the city of Łódź.

Chałka with cold butter and strawberry jam at breakfast, and a big pile of potate pancaces until end of the day - that's my definition of happines !

You are more than welcome... anytime Brother 🙂 You seem to be very polite and nice person.. about pancakes we adopted potato pancakes when it was bad.. as my grandmother remembers ;)

In the Lublin area an onion cake called "cebularz" is very popular. The Jews of Lublin were first to make it in the XIX century. When I was a kid growing up in Lublin, I thought cebularz was avaiilable throughout the country but, apparently, that is not the case.

I always thought that Polish food was very good. After coming to America in 1981 and going several times to French restaurants-back then we didn't have any of them in Poland-you can't imagine my surprise when I realized that the Polish food I grew up on and liked so much was actually French.

One food that I know comes from Jewish cuisine is cebularz, so pancakes with diced onions. Those can be easily bought in Warsaw, but for the good stuff you have to come to Lublin, as it is a bit of regional dish. Another one is carp, which after the war has become a traditional Christmas eve food in Poland and, from what I've read is based on pre-war Jewish dish. One of the more popular ways to serve it is even called "karp po żydowsku" so "carp in Jewish style".

In Polish tradition there are also some foods and drinks that are made only once a year. I really like a compote made of dried fruits that we drink on Christmas but it's hard to get them in other parts of the year. The little ear-shaped dumplings are also popular with borscht or mushroom soup on Christmas but nobody makes them on a daily basis. And of course we borrowed gefilte carp from Polish Jews and eat it on Christmas Eve (but it has too many fishbones for me).

Wowwww!! I’m Polish living in Toronto, Canada. I’ve gone to a Jewish restaurant. I began looking the menu up and down with dismay. About 80% percent of dishes offered were dishes I was very well familiar with. Love you man. Long live Israel 🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱

Ogórki (gurki) kiszone, Kutia, Baba (Kiszka) ziemniaczana a'la gęsia Pipka (more kosher version), Babka (cake), makowiec (mohn roll), possibly Siemieniotka soup too (nowadays illegal), Chałwa (Halava), kasza Manna (great and cheap dish for kids with an addition of grated apple, banana or pear etc), kogiel-mogiel (kugel-mogel), zapiekanka, cebulak, fried Carp fish (Christmas Eve dish), powitalny chleb z solą (bread with salt as a welcoming gesture or as a diet during fasting).

Gołąbki are also Polish and Jewish food. My Jewish friend had a tears in his eyes and said. " My mama made the same ".

I grew up in 80' and 90'. Then You could buy chałka only on friday and saturday morning. Now every day. Maca was always as snack. Now You can buy maca with onion flavour. I like it cause I prefer pastery without Yeats even in a bread. But my kids really love chałka.

when one of my grandmothers was young she use to buy challah from a polish bakery, where it was sold as polish egg bread.

Have you tried flavored maca? Onion maca, pepper maca, garlic maca :D Go for it! I also always treated it as light food, like when you have stomach problems or you are on some restrictive diet for health reasons.

Potatoes are a vegetable that was brought to Europe after the discovery of America. Certainly, they were not available to every European resident at the very beginning. Wealthy people could use it. It is very likely, as you suggest, that the potato came to Poland from Italy. In Poland there was a queen of Italian origin, Bona Sworza. Together with her and her entourage, a lot of vegetables came to Poland. Moreover, the general name of many vegetables comes from the name of Italy. In Poland they are called "Italian". This may be the path to Poland for potatoes. As for the form of preparation of the potato, i.e. pancakes, it is difficult to say. Try the potato pancakes with apple, they are great. Greetings.

Jews had been living in Poland for almost 700 years before the holocaust happened so there are centuries of intermixing cultures. Actually the nowadays situtaion that there's no (or very little) jewish people in Poland's everyday landscape is quite unusual if we consider it historically. Aspecially if you think about the villages and small towns (that often used to be sztetls) I come from eastern Poland and here potato pancakes, along with babka ziemniaczana and kiszka, are considered traditional peasant food, because they are made from cheap and easily aviable igredients - mainly onions and potatoes.

Maca is a rather a niche food, conaidered mostly diet food. Jews have a complicated history in Poland but there were quite a few Polish Jews before WWII.

Spróbuj macy firmy Wit-Pol w takich czerwonych pudełkach, jest świetna

I always have one box of matza in my house. It’s good with peanut butter or cheese with tomato.

Kogiel Mogiel! It was probably my fav sweet “snack” grandma had in offer for her grandchildren :))

mieszkam w kanadzie i chaleka mozesz kupic prawie w kazdym polskim sklepie

Because Aszkenazi Jews come from "Eastern" Europe. But Polish Chałka will usually contain dairy. Herring is common in northern and central/Eastern Europe. And potato pancakes are equally common in other places too,like Sweden in Germany. It's just based on common ingredients.

I used to live in Upstate New York. At Wegmans supermarket I often visited Jewish section to buy Polish food :)

"Gęsi pipek" is sorta like Polish/Jewish Haggis. Replace the sheep stomach with a goose stomach or neck and stuff it with grated potato, minced onion and in some cases meat like kosher beef (or regular beef/pork if you're not jewish) and boil it then bake in an oven.

That was super interesting. I was always sure chałka is typical Polish food (that I love btw), great funfact

Potatoes anyway came from America (Peru) only 500 years ago, so no latkes in the temple, at least not with potatoes.

Są u nas "śledzie po żydowsku" - w dwóch wersjach: jedne z rodzynkami, a drugie z czosnkiem i majerankiem. Nie wiem na ile to jest "żydowskie" - może po prostu taka nazwa się ukuła jak "ryba po grecku" - żaden Grek nie wie co to...

The foods you describe are widely eaten throughout the Slavic nations. Hardly surprising as we have a lit of history together