Egg plates gone, we dug into the deep, ancient cast- iron that held the cholent. Sometimes my mother served it with her naturally brine-fermented garlic pickles, sometimes with fresh sauerkraut sold by the kilo from a huge barrel in the corner grocery store and in the summer simply with fresh uncooked market vegetables of the season. AND NOW Cholent is the most ancient and best-preserved of all traditional Jewish foods. It survived for several thousand years, dating back to times when Jews buried the cholent in hot embers in cooking pottery and let the flavors slowly meld and marry overnight for the Sabbath meal. Even though this is an old tradition evolved in the kitchens of many generations of Jewish women to restrain from cooking on the Sabbath day, slow bean cookery appears in most cuisines of the world.
Some scholars argue that they all evolved from the ancient cholent but that is a self-centered view.
Just think of concoctions as the French cassoulet, Boston baked beans, chili con carne. Legumes are very economical and even the poorest families could afford serving it once a week, often preparing a vegetarian version when meat is beyond their pocketbooks. And, fortunately, legumes are very nutritious, nearly as high in protein as meats and offer complete proteins if eaten along with grain or bread. As Jews migrated to every corner of the world, they wisely adopted their host country's available foods and modified their cholent. As a result, today we have dozens and scores of ethnic-influenced cholent recipes.