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Bessarabian Jewish Foodways

Community

Before 1941 Jews were a very large part of the population of Chişinău, Bălţi, Soroca, Orhei and dozens of small towns — as millers, grain and wine traders, innkeepers, tavern-keepers and kosher butchers. An Ashkenazi kitchen in constant exchange with its neighbours: mămăligă eaten with brynza and with herring alike, aubergine and pepper spreads, stuffed fish, honey and poppy pastries, and the Sabbath and festival calendar. The Chişinău pogroms of 1903 and 1905, and the destruction of the community in the Holocaust from 1941, removed most of it. ⚠ A DISTINCT TRADITION, not a component of Moldovan cuisine.

Atlas — where and when

Communities and languages

  • Bessarabian Jews community documented

Languages: Yiddish

What is recorded

  • Bessarabian Jewish foodways are a distinct Ashkenazi tradition that was in close and genuinely two-way exchange with its neighbours until its destruction from 1941. It is recorded as a neighbouring tradition and never as a component of Moldovan cuisine. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

Recorded as relating to this foodway

Recipes

No recipes are filed under this cuisine yet.