In the 20th century, dozens of South African Jews and Jewish communities compiled cookbooks, usually containing family recipes, and had them privately printed. Nomi Kaltmann describes the New Zealand-based scholar Gavin Beinart-Smollan’s research into these artifacts:
South Africa’s Jewish community reached its zenith during the 1970s. Stemming from the migration of Lithuanian Jews [or Litvaks], who brought with them a rich cultural heritage, the community once boasted around 100,000 members. However, as the landscape shifted, many Jews opted to leave the country. Today, there are roughly 50,000 Jews in the country.
“The recipes in the community cookbooks are all kosher. Even the recipes in The Happy Hostess, created by the sisterhood of the Pretoria Jewish Reform Congregation, mostly abided by the rules of kashrut—apart from a couple recipes for crayfish! In this way they were very different from a lot of postwar American Jewish cookbooks, which featured dozens of non-kosher dishes,” said Beinart-Smollen. “Some of the books also adapted iconic South African recipes like bobotie”—a South African dish traditionally made by non-Jews with spiced minced meat, often lamb or beef, mixed with various ingredients such as bread soaked in milk, chutney, and a blend of spices—“to make them suitable for the kosher kitchen.”
“What makes South African Jewish food distinctive is that it is different to my encounters with Jewish food in the United States and elsewhere,” said [the historian Adam] Mendelsohn. “It reflects the transplantation of certain Litvak recipes to South Africa. There are certain things which aren’t here. Polish Jewish cooking isn’t here. No knishes.”
Read more on Tablet: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/food/articles/recipe-remembrance-south-african-cookbooks