97 Orchard

Like most Americans, I’m the descendent of immigrants, and this book gave me a sense of what my great-grandparents’ experience was like better than anything I’d previously read.  

Ziegelman has an incredible ability to connect concrete details to big historical transformations. Her discussion of how Irish peasants’ overreliance on potatoes led to famine, for example, was both fascinating and shattering.

As a New Yorker, I was struck by how much seemed the same but also by how much had changed. The families at 97 Orchard didn’t always have running water, but they had access to a wide range of affordable,… show more.

The family stories in this book bring history to life on a personal level. The five families are connected by their immigrant experience, but they approached food in different ways, from family-oriented German biergartens to kosher delis to imported olive oil. Each new wave of immigrants brought their own unique traditions to America, and the neighborhood evolved as each successive group brought something new to the metaphorical table.

I find the tension between maintaining food traditions and adapting them to a new nation fascinating. It also made me think about how much each group contributed to the American diet. 

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,… show more.

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… show more.