Sabor Judío: The Jewish Mexican Cookbook, with Ilan Stavans and Margaret E. Boyle
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“An instant classic and more than a cookbook—it is a critical portrait of a community. An absolutely new and stellar contribution.”—Michael W. Twitty, author of Koshersoul
Sabor Judío celebrates the delicious fusion of two culinary traditions: Jewish and Mexican. Written with joy and verve, Ilan Stavans and Margaret Boyle’s lavishly illustrated cookbook demonstrates how cooking and eating connect the Jewish-Mexicans across places and generations. Featuring one hundred deeply personal recipes enjoyed by Mexican Jews around the world, the book is organized by meal—desayuno (breakfast), comida (lunch), and cena (dinner)—and also includes dishes made for Shabbat, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Passover, Hanukkah, Shavuot, and other holidays.
Sabor Judío isn’t only a cookbook; it is also a vibrant history of Jewish immigration to Mexico from 1492 to the present. It explains how flavors and dishes evolved in Mexican and Jewish kitchens and how they fused into a distinct cuisine, mainly by the labor of Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Mizrahi, and converso women. This cookbook is the product of two award-winning, internationally known Jewish Mexican writers and foodies who spent a decade gathering recipes and personal narratives from Jewish Mexican households. The result is a dynamic and delicious array of recipes and experiences, infusing important cultural heritage into this essential culinary record.
Ilan Stavans, a leading Jewish Mexican scholar and critic, is Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities and Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His recent books include Translation as Home: A Multilingual Life (University of Toronto Press, 2024); What Is American Literature? (Oxford University Press, 2022); Jewish Literature: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2021); and The Seventh Heaven: Travels through Jewish Latin America (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020).
Margaret E. Boyle is director of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies at Bowdoin College and associate professor of Romance Languages and Literatures. Her teaching and research spans the languages, literature, and cultures of early modern Spain and colonial Latin America. She is the author of Unruly Women: Performance, Penitence and Punishment in Early Modern Spain (University of Toronto Press, 2014) and co-editor of Health and Healing in the Early Modern Iberian World: A Gendered Perspective (University of Toronto Press, 2021).