A century of Shabbat recipes from the JC – and now we’ve got a new cook book for your Friday night feasts

The original JC cookbook front page and preface and (centre) author Florence Greenberg in Palestine[Missing Credit]

The 1936 first edition comprised hundreds of recipes in tiny fonts spread over more than 500 pages. The only images were illustrated adverts – including still-familiar names: Grodzinski, Rakusen’s and M. Bloom (Kosher) & Son Ltd – quite unlike 2025’s Friday Night Feasts, which is peppered with glossy, mouthwatering photos for every recipe.

Greenberg’s cookbook was popular enough to merit eight editions, with the most recent published in 1980, and is still a standby for the kitchen shelf of many households, including my own.

I have a hardback fourth edition, printed in 1953, and originally a gift for my Grandma Doris from my mother and her sister, with the handwritten note inside reading “To darling Mummy” and dated “24/12/83”.

The food-stained cover has come loose, and is just hanging on to the stitched spine. Best thumbed is the Passover chapter, with Greenberg’s recipe for the coconut pyramids I once made with Grandma covered in scorch marks.

Past JC food editor Evelyn Rose in the kitchen and (right) with her predecessor Florence Greenberg[Missing Credit]

The introduction might raise eyebrows for today’s feminists. A single passing reference to the cook as “she (or he)” aside, the author seems to conceive of the kitchen as the exclusive preserve of women. She recommends the “experienced housewife” read the section on food values and menu building –  “for on the housewife’s shoulders rests the responsibility of providing nourishing and appetising meals for her family and of planning the menus so that they produce variety and interest”.

Most fascinating of all are the snapshots of the everyday kosher dishes of the middle of the last century.

Alongside classics such as brisket, challah and kneidlach – which Greenberg also dubs matzo kleis – and such festival favourites as hamantaschen are dishes that have thankfully fallen out of favour: giblet risotto, ox tongue rissoles, perch and pike.

Florence Greenberg's Jewish Cookbook was published in association with the JC[Missing Credit]

Home cooks had a nose-to-tail mindset and stronger stomachs back then. There’s a recipe for “sheep’s head, boiled” and a curried sheep’s head; and no less than 18 variations on calf, from fried brains to feet fritters, even paired with prunes and chestnuts.

Greenberg covered all aspects of the kosher kitchen, from kashering meat and poultry to detailed notes on how to carve them once cooked. “The larder must be swept and the shelves washed daily,” she counsels, and as for the storing of meat without a refrigerator: “Cover with a wire gauze frame; see that the frame fits the dish tightly, so that flies are unable to enter.”

The section on “useful hints and general information” offers priceless tips. “To prevent a disagreeable odour from green vegetables while cooking, put a crust of bread in the water or add a teaspoonful of vinegar.” Rub dry mustard on your hands to ”remove any disagreeable odour”.

Noting how traditional dishes vary between Jews from different lands, Greenberg wrote: “One of the first tasks that the Wizo had to set itself through its institutions in the early days of the Jewish National Home in Israel was to re-educate Jewish women from cold Northern European countries to a form of dietary suitable for Israel.”

Here’s her vision of the future: “In time meals consisting of salad and uncooked vegetables in which carrots predominate will come be looked on as traditionally Jewish.”

Greenberg’s successor, Evelyn Rose launched her JC recipe column in 1959 and was the paper’s food editor for more than 40 years.

Evelyn Rose exhibited classic style both in her fashionwear and timeless recipes[Missing Credit]

Though she never wrote her own JC cookbook, she did pen several cookbooks including The Complete International Jewish Cookbook, in 1976, republished as The New Complete International Jewish Cookbook. These recipes reveal how the Jewish kitchen had changed in the decades since Greenberg first wrote. Ashkenazi classics were now joined by new flavours from further afield for the more cosmopolitan era of widespread air travel.

Colourful Sephardi dishes including spice-filled Moroccan adafina joined cholent. Ladino bimuelos (deep fried puffs soaked in rosewater scented syrup) went into the Chanukah section alongside latkes. Turkish cacik (cucumber, yoghurt and mint) sat alongside kibbutz-staple Israeli salad in the vegetable recipes.

An experienced traveller, Rose led us towards embracing international flavours in our own kitchens. By the time I took over in 2011, Israeli chefs such as Yotam Ottolenghi were sharing the bold flavours cooked at home by Israel’s immigrants.

Today, thanks to Israel’s melting pot, we take for granted a menu encompassing a world of ingredients. Over the past 15 years I’ve seen pomegranate molasses, zhoug and tahini move from condiments you could only find on trips to Israel and maybe continental grocers to supermarket staples.

These ingredients can be found throughout Friday Night Feasts. Roasted vegetables are showered with earthy, herbaceous za’atar; salmon steaks are smothered in fiery green harissa; and a frozen parfait given nutty sweetness from tahini and silan (date syrup).

And this new JC cookbook reflects the busy world we live in, with no time to fry gefilte fish from scratch nor mince your own meat.

JC food editor Victoria Prever makes innovative kosher cuisine easy with her new book Friday Night Feasts[Missing Credit]

My Shabbat dinner is often planned on Friday morning while food shopping, after a quick look at what I have in my fridge and store cupboard.

What you will find in my book are recipes I turn to every week, all simple, easy-to-cook and made from easy-to-find ingredients.

Most require minimal hands-on time. In Friday Night Feasts, you’ll find chicken tray bakes that require little more than piling the ingredients into a roasting tin and then leaving them to do their thing before, emerging melting and delicious. In minutes, a side of salmon can be turned into a showstopping centrepiece topped with crunchy, harissa-spiced breadcrumbs and sticky sweet silan.

Having served for 15 years now as JC food editor, it has been a pleasure to pick some of my favourite dishes for Friday night dinners – the most cherished time of the week for the family.

There are mouthwatering soups, a range of challah recipes, dips, mains and desserts. I’ve also thought about side dishes that will work with many of the mains, all equally labour-light and delicious. To help save time meal planning, I’ve added a selection of suggested menus for different times of year.

The final part of the process of producing this book was to enlist my JC colleagues to test out the recipes. These dishes worked for me, but would they be just as tasty and satisfying in the hands of other home cooks? My team took the challenge on valiantly and gave me honest feedback to hone and craft the final results. That means these are triple-tested recipes that you’ll turn to again and again.

For almost 100 years, the JC has been at your side in the kitchen. Now, with my new cookbook, it’s ready to feed a new generation of friends and family every Friday night for many years to come.

​

Click here to order your copy of Friday Night Feasts