The Otey Scruggs Memorial Lecture: The Jewish Culinary Identity

The History Department Presents the Annual Otey Scruggs Memorial Lecture:

“Faith and Food in Medieval and Early Modern Spain: The Jewish Culinary Identity,” presented by Hélène Jawhara Piñer, Ph.D.

This lecture offers a scholarly analysis of Jewish culinary identity in medieval Iberia, situating food at the intersection of religion, medicine, politics and cultural exchange. Drawing on archival research and the earliest Iberian cookbooks, it examines how Jewish food practices developed within—and in dialogue with—Muslim and Christian culinary traditions.

The lecture compares the thirteenth-century Kitāb al-ṭabīkh with fourteenth-century cookbooks produced under Christian rule, analyzing these texts as both culinary and dietary manuals shaped by religious law, medical theory and social hierarchy. Particular attention is given to the oldest extant Spanish cookbook, which preserves the earliest explicitly Jewish recipes, revealing the Jewish contribution to Andalusian cuisine and shared culinary knowledge across confessional boundaries.

The talk further explores Jewish and Muslim food consumption in the Kitāb al-ṭabīkh, engages medieval medical discourse—especially the writings of Maimonides—and traces the evolution of Sephardic foodways through Christian-era cookbooks, literature, and Inquisition records. It highlights holiday foods as enduring markers of identity and continuity under conditions of persecution and forced conversion.

The lecture concludes by examining contemporary Spain’s engagement with Sephardic culinary heritage and current efforts toward recognition, revival and cultural memory