Gefilte Fish Line Yottam Ottoleghi sneeringly says of “gefilte fish as “sweet, grey and smeared with gelatinous gunk, gefilte fish was perceived as a typical remnant of the old Ashkenazi world that was best left behind in Eastern Europe.”
Like many of his ilk he is keen to leave behind the rich Gefilte fish, but also fails to recognise how important said cuisine was back in the day
My Uncle Harry once said to us that he was sure that we came from Russia because we like our gefilte fish savoury rather than sweet.
Jeffrey Yoskowitz, co-founder of the Gefilteria, a New York enterprise that specialises in the said ‘fish’ is quoted as saying "I like to think of the gefilte fish sweetness variation as the Jewish version of the great European olive oil/butter divide,"
Gefilte fish, of course, was a staple of households in Eastern Europe, and not in Sephardic lands (although Sephardi Jews have their own spicy variants of the dish). Fish could be served at any meal as it is parev, and could be prepared pre-Shabbos and served cold. In particular the recipe meant that the fish could be combined with cheap ingredients, and still provide a wholesome meal. I read that the poaching liquid could be served as soup, but I think that is going too far! Good cheap meals for poor people.
Those whose family came from Poland had sugar put in the mix – and not only for gefilte fish – also for latkes, and it has been speculated that this is because in the 19th century sugar beets were a big industry in Poland, and sugar found its way into everything that had previously been savoury or peppery – gefilte fish, latkes, kugels
The absolute expert in this area seems to be Marvin I. Herzog. He wrote a book called “ The Yiddish Language in Northern Poland: Its Geography and History” and said “The custom of preparing fish as a Sabbath delicacy dates at least to Talmudic times, and is universal in our area. However, sweetened fish, also called poyliše fiš ‘Polish fish’, is generally unpalatable to those east of the border, who prefer their fish seasoned only with pepper”
According to an article in the Jewish Daily Forward, he plotted the boundaries between two of the main Yiddish dialects — the central Polish/Galician (Poylish/Galitzianer), and the more northern Lithuanian (Litvak) and created a map that lined up exactly with the sweet and savoury culinary lines. It's a division that doesn't map to any other political or natural border — a strictly Jewish geography later dubbed "the gefilte fish line." Tell us how you eat your gefilte fish, and we'll tell you who you are.
So Litvak/Ukranian/Belarussian gefilte fish is made with salt (and pepper), and is eaten with horseradish (chrane)but if you travel fifty kilometres to the west of Warsaw, you may find sweet gefilte fish.
We are told that in the 1920s, the French food writer Edouard de Pomiane, who wrote the book “Cuisine Juivre” or “Jewish Cuisine”observed of jellied carp, “This is the classic carp dish as it appears on all the Sabbath luncheon tables. If one had to sum up all of Jewish cooking in a single dish, this is the one that would epitomize it.”
Jellied carp was so popular, in fact, that it eventually became known as carpe à la juive, “carp in the Jewish style,” and as such was offered in four variations in the encyclopaedia of French haute cuisine, Larousse Gastronomique, written originally by Pierre Larousse in 1938 and which is still going. Apparently, according to food writer Eve Jochnowitz, writing in Culinary Tourism sweetened gefilte fish is known as Carp a la Polonaise. So there you are!