What of these 25 Old World dishes have you and your family eaten? Let us know in the comment section below.

The video explores how Jewish immigrants on New York’s Lower East Side in the early 1900s preserved identity and survived poverty through traditional Old World cooking.

Twenty-five “forgotten” dishes are highlighted as the culinary backbone of Jewish American life during this era.

Many foods—like patcha, helzel, kishke, and gribenes—reflect extreme resourcefulness, using every scrap of the animal to stretch limited budgets.

Staple comfort dishes such as kasha varnishkes, cholent, and borscht provided warmth, sustenance, and a taste of home in cramped tenements.

Desserts and sweets like teiglach, ingberlach, and lekach signified holiday joy and emotional resilience despite hardship.

Everyday breads and starches—biales, boles, knishes, and latkes—served as affordable, portable, and filling street foods.

Several dishes carried strong ritual or symbolic meaning, including schlissel challah, zimmes, and gefilte fish, linking tradition to hope and religious observance.

Fermented and preserved items such as beet kvass and cold borscht reflected the immigrants’ practical Old World foodways adapted to New York life.

The tenement kitchen is portrayed as a central cultural hub where smells, sounds, and flavors bound communities together.

Collectively, these dishes not only sustained physical survival but also shaped the emerging Jewish American identity and influenced New York’s culinary history.