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Jeanette Schwartz



My grandma, Jeanette, was a chicken soup sommelier. The same way that wine sommeliers can taste a wine and identify its components and origin, Jeanette would taste chicken soup and notice if it did not include a fresh pullet, if it was heated up from the day before, or if there was too little salt. The soup had to be perfect. Jeanette’s daughter (and my mom), Barbara, explains that she would try to make Jeanette’s chicken soup recipe for every holiday as Jeanette got older, and the greatest accomplishment was a compliment on this soup.

Jeanette and her husband, Jack, with me and my sister

Some of my fondest childhood memories took place in my grandma’s kitchen. Shabbat dinners with fresh chicken soup, rice pilaf, and plenty of other dishes that would smell up their entire apartment; annual Hamantaschen baking; looking through her dozens of Wilton cake decorating tips - the list is endless. Jeanette was an incredibly generous person, and knew she was a great cook and baker, so she always gave back to people by making them food. She did not grow up a very religiously knowledgeable Jew, but rather her Torah was that the most important thing is to be a good person.


“Her focus on food did not come from positive experiences she had, but from the negative ones”, explains Barbara. Born in 1930 in Rypin, Poland to Brina Miriam and Hanan, Jeanette’s family was poor but always able to put basic food on the table. She was the eldest child of 5: she had two sisters (Ruth and Batia) and two brothers (David and Srulik).


Jeanette and her sister Batia at Batia's wedding. The three sisters had a very close relationship.

Jeanette was just a little girl when the war broke out. Her family fled from Poland to Ukraine in 1939, and from there to Siberia. Her and her family were all in a small room, and there was no heat despite the freezing temperatures. Jeanette had all kinds of harrowing stories of being lost and separated and having to fend for herself, but her most significant memory in all of that was the lack of food. “She would talk so much about how hungry they were, and how skinny and malnourished she was. She always said that it was that experience that made food so central in her life. She never wanted to experience that kind of hunger,” said Barbara.


At some point during the last year of the war, my grandma and her family were moved from Siberia to Tashkent in Uzbekistan. Her life here was equally difficult. The recipe Barbara associates with all the women in the family - her aunts, grandmother, and mother - is a rice pilaf dish with carrots and chicken. Barbara once asked Jeanette how it was that her Polish family’s one family recipe was a rice dish (rice is not commonly associated with Polish cuisine). Jeanette responded: “Because they made this with lamb in large clay ovens in the markets in Tashkent.”


After the war, my grandma ended up in a displaced persons camp in Germany. She eventually met and married my grandpa, Jack, and they moved to the United States. She was only 17 years old when she got married, and so interestingly enough it was probably when she was married that she finally learned to cook.


My mom was born in 1965 and is an only child; Jeanette would always say to her “You’re my whole life”. Barbara spent hours at a time sitting or lying down on the breakfast nook, watching her mother cook and listening to her advice. To add to her repertoire of delicious soups, traditional Eastern European foods, and cookies, Jeanette began taking cake decorating lessons and making beautiful, brightly decorated cakes. It seemed she had every Wilton cake decorating tip in her drawers.


Today, my family lives in the very same house that Barbara grew up in, and Barbara therefore cooks in the same kitchen my grandma cooked in. “The thing that strikes me so much, and I think the thing that will be really sad for me when I leave this house is that when I cook - especially for a holiday - I see myself as a little girl, sitting there on the breakfast nook watching her, and I feel like she’s with me. I have a picture of her right in the kitchen”, said Barbara.

Barbara and her husband, David, sitting at the colorful breakfast nook of Barbara's childhood home.

And so, stemming from a constant fear of the malnourishment and starvation of her childhood, my grandma Jeanette ensured that her daughter, grandchildren, and guests would always leave her house with a full stomach and warm heart. Her food was a reflection of the generous, loving woman she was, and of the history she carried. Next time you make a chicken soup, think of Jeanette The Chicken Soup Sommelier, use the following tips of hers, and bring a little bit extra to someone who might need it:

  • Use a pullet

  • Make the soup fresh

  • Don’t use too much water

  • Leave the skin on (never try to make it low fat - never try to make Jewish food healthier)

  • Use plenty of salt


Below is Jeanette's butter cookie recipe. This is the dough she used, and my family continues to use, for hamantaschen.


Butter Cookies


- 1 pound unsalted butter, softened

- 2 1/2 cups sugar

- 6 egg yolks

- 1/2 cup sour cream

- 3 tsp vanilla extract

- 1 lemon peel, grated fine

- 6 cups flour (possibly more to get the right texture)

- 2 tsp baking powder

- 1 tsp baking soda

- 1 tsp salt


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter and sugar. Beat in egg yolks, one at a time. Add sour cream, vanilla, and lemon peel. In a separate bowl, sift flour with baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Slowly add flour mixture to the wet ingredient bowl until a dough forms. Add more flour, if necessary, to get a smooth cookie dough texture. Bake on ungreased cookie sheets for 10-12 minutes.



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