page_title: Sephardic Jewish cuisine
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Sephardic Jewish cuisine / History
caption_attribution_description: Small pickled lemons - a Moroccan delicacy
context_page_description: Sephardic Jewish cuisine is an assortment of cooking traditions that developed among the Sephardi Jews—the Jews of Spain and Portugal, and those of this Iberian origin who were dispersed in the Sephardic Diaspora, and ultimately became the Eastern Sephardim and North African Sephardim as they settled throughout the Mediterranean in places such as Turkey, Greece, the Balkans, as well as the Arab countries of West Asia and North Africa. Cuisine of the Sephardi Jews also includes the cuisine of those who became the Western Sephardim who settled in Holland, England, and from these places elsewhere.
  Although Mizrahi Jews, being the pre-existing Jews of the Greater Middle East, are sometimes called Sephardim in a broader sense due to their style of liturgy, and although there is some overlap in populations due to the Sephardic Diaspora, the Sephardic Jews also settled in many other countries outside the Greater Middle East as well. As such, this article deals only with the cuisine of the Jewish populations with ancestral origins in the Iberian Peninsula, in whichever regions they settled, not just the Greater Middle East.
context_section_description: Sephardi Jews are the Jews of Spain and Portugal. These were expelled or forced to convert in 1492. Many of the expellees settled in North African Berber and Arabic-speaking countries, such as Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya, becoming the North African Sephardim. Those settling in Greece, Turkey, the Balkans, Syria, the Lebanon and the Holy Land became the Eastern Sephardim. The Western Sephardim, also known more ambiguously as the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, left Spain and Portugal as New Christians in a steady stream over the course of the next few centuries, and converted back to Judaism once in Holland, England, etc.
  While the pre-existing Jews of the countries in which they settled (in the Greater Middle East, for example, are called "Mizrahim") are distinct, the term Sephardi as used in "Sephardi cuisine" would refer only to the culinary traditions of those Jews with ancestral origins to the Jews of Spain and Portugal.
  Both the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula and the pre-existing Jews  of Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria,  Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Italy, and Greece into whose communities they settled adapted local dishes to the constraints of the kosher kitchen. Since the establishment of a Jewish state and the convergence of Jews from all the globe in Israel, these local cuisines, with all their differences, have come to represent the collection of culinary traditions broadly known as "Sephardi cuisine."
  Some of the Jews who fled from the Inquisition with other Sephardim in the 15th century settled in Recife, Brazil, where their cuisine was influenced by new local ingredients like molasses, rum, sugar, vanilla, chocolate, bell peppers, corn, tomatoes, kidney beans, string beans and turkey. In 1654, 23 Sephardic Jews arrived in New Amsterdam (present-day New York) bringing this cuisine with them to the early colonial United States. Early American Jewish cuisine was heavily influenced by this branch of Sephardic cuisine. Many of the recipes were bound up in observance of traditional holidays and remained true to their origins. These included dishes such as stew and fish fried in olive oil, beef and bean stews, almond puddings, and egg custards. The first kosher cookbook in America was the Jewish Cookery Book by Esther Levy which was published in 1871 in Philadelphia and includes many of the traditional recipes.
caption: Moroccan-style pickled lemons
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