On Rosh Hashana, Ashkenazi Jews dip apple slices in honey for a "sweet New Year." The Aleppine Jews -- whose ancestors were prominent residents of Aleppo, Syria, for many centuries -- may eat scarlet candied quinces instead, or even translucent shreds of candied spaghetti squash.
That's just the beginning of the unexpected quality of their cuisine. Its roots go back many centuries, and the dishes have both rich historical resonance and a remarkable originality. The rest of an Aleppine Rosh Hashana meal might be leek fritters, spicy tomato soup with kibbeh meatballs, stuffed baby artichokes, Swiss chard with chickpeas and a luscious braised breast of veal.
When you get away from the holidays, the really unfamiliar dishes appear. Okra with prunes, apricots and tamarind. Chicken roasted with spaghetti until it starts to crisp. Eggs scrambled with rhubarb.
But scarcely anything had been written about this distinctive school of cooking before Poopa Dweck's "Aromas of Aleppo: The Legendary Cuisine of Syrian Jews."
Unlike most big Middle Eastern cities, Aleppo didn't suffer an economic decline at the end of the Middle Ages. Elsewhere, medieval caravansaries (inns for caravans) have been torn down or converted into museums, but in Aleppo some still serve as commercial warehouses. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Aleppo was prosperous from the silk trade.
With prosperity came both a rich cuisine and an air of tolerance.
Early in the 20th century, when Aleppo was the largest city in Syria, T.E. Lawrence described it as "a point where all the races, creeds and tongues of the Ottoman Empire meet and know one another in a spirit of compromise. . . . there is more fellowship between Christian and Mohammedan, Armenian, Arab, Kurd, Turk and Jew, than in, perhaps, any other great city of the Ottoman Empire."
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Preserving a cuisine
THAT was some 90 years ago, of course. The last Jews left Aleppo in 1997 and most now live around New York or in Latin America. Dweck's family came to New York in 1948. She has made it her task to preserve their venerable cuisine in its fullness. Her book is a huge tome of 388 pages and is lavishly produced; most of the 180 dishes are illustrated with color photos, interspersed with soulful black-and-white family pictures dating back to the 1890s, when the first Aleppine Jews came here.
