Virtual Book Talk—"Recipes for the Melting Pot: The Lives of The Settlement Cook Book"

Join the Museum at Eldridge Street and author Dr. Nora Rubel for a discussion of Rubel's recent book, Recipes for the Melting Pot: The Lives of The Settlement Cook Book.

In 1901, Lizzie Black Kander put together a cookbook based on the classes she taught at the Milwaukee Jewish Mission. “I was trying to teach a group of young foreign girls in a crowded neighborhood how to cook simple and nutritious food, yet have it as attractive and inexpensive as we prepare it in America,” she recalled. The Settlement Cook Book would go on to be the most successful charitable cookbook in American history, remaining a best-seller into the 1970s. Despite including nonkosher recipes, it became a mainstay in Jewish kitchens and an enduring touchstone of Jewish American culture.

Recipes for the Melting Pot tells the remarkable story of The Settlement Cook Book, demonstrating how it shaped Jewish American identity—and was in turn shaped by generations of Jewish women. Nora L. Rubel traces the cookbook’s evolution across forty editions over several decades, through waves of immigration, shifting gender roles, upward mobility, suburbanization, and rapid changes in Jewish life. She argues that the book celebrates pluralism, allowing it to serve at once as a tool for Americanization, a repository of tradition, and a platform for culinary innovation. Ultimately, The Settlement Cook Book is a record of American Jewish women’s history, told through the food they made and the lives they led. A cultural biography of an iconic cookbook, this lively and inviting book shares an inclusive vision of American cuisine.

Please see the Zoom link in your order confirmation email. This program is entirely virtual.

Registration for this Zoom program is pay-what-you-wish. The following are suggested amounts for each ticket type:

Adults $12
Seniors $10
Students $8

REGISTER HERE

CLICK HERE to purchase Recipes for the Melting Pot.

Nora L. Rubel is the Elizabeth Denio Professor in the Department of Religion and Classics, at the University of Rochester, where she serves as Co-Director of the Center for Jewish Studies. A leading scholar at the intersection of food, religion, and American ethnic identity, Dr. Rubel's work explores how domestic spaces and everyday rituals shape the American Jewish experience.

She is the author of Doubting the Devout: The Ultra-Orthodox in the Jewish-American Imagination and co-editor of Blessings Beyond the Binary: Transparent and the Queer Jewish Family and Religion, Food, and Eating in North America. Her newest book, Recipes for the Melting Pot: The Lives of The Settlement Cook Book, provides a definitive cultural history of one of America's most influential culinary texts and its role in the Americanization of immigrant kitchens.

A frequent media contributor, Dr. Rubel is a featured expert in the PBS documentary Family Recipe: Jewish American Style. Her insights have been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Forward, and Serious Eats. Dr. Rubel lives in Rochester, New York, where she continues to bridge the gap between rigorous historical scholarship and the vibrant stories of the American table.

About the Museum at Eldridge Street:
The Museum at Eldridge Street is housed in the Eldridge Street Synagogue, a magnificent National Historic Landmark that has been meticulously restored. Opened in 1887, the synagogue is the first great house of worship built in America by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Today, it is the only remaining marker of the great wave of Jewish migration to the Lower East Side that is open to a broad public who wishes to visit Jewish New York. Exhibits, tours, public programs, and education initiatives tell the story of Jewish immigrant life, explore architecture and historic preservation, inspire reflection on cultural continuity, and foster collaboration and exchange between people of all faiths, heritages, and interests.