97 Orchard
Book description
“Social history is, most elementally, food history. Jane Ziegelman had the great idea to zero in on one Lower East Side tenement building, and through it she has crafted a unique and aromatic narrative of New York’s immigrant culture: with bread in the oven, steam rising from pots, and the…
Why read it?
2 authors picked 97 Orchard as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Immigrants have the biggest impact on what modern day New Yorkers eat.
This book tells the story of five families from different cultures—German, Irish, Russian (Prussian) Jewish, Lithuanian, and Italian—who at various times all lived at the same tenement on the Lower East Side in the late 19th and early 20th century. Their stories, and the ways their adopted culture evolved since immigrating to America, is told with an examination of the resourceful ways the families earned money, sourced, and shopped for food.
Recipes reveal how certain dishes born out of necessity became iconic staples of American cuisine (for instance,…
From Amanda's list on making it there from anywhere in New York City.
The information we have about the five immigrant families who lived in the tenement block at 97 Orchard Street is scanty but I love this book because Jane Ziegelman brings to life the food world of this area of New York inhabited by waves of immigrant Germans, Irish, German and East European Jews, and Italians. We learn about the krauthobblers who in the autumn went from door to door carrying a special knife which they used to shred the hundreds of cabbages the German housewives needed to prepare the barrel of sauerkraut (pickled cabbage) which saw their families through the…
From Lizzie's list on food and history.
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