Recipes for the Melting Pot: Reading The Settlement Cook Book

About the Event:

This talk examines the ways that the 20th century cookbook, The Way to a Man’s Heart: The Settlement Cook Book, became a beloved Jewish icon. Filled with non-kosher recipes, the cookbook has been called “unabashedly Jewish” and “a Jewish Joy of Cooking” by generations of reviewers and cooks, yet dismissed as Jewish “by association only” by some historians. Nevertheless, the heirloom quality of this book transcended generations leading to the perception of the book as a Jewish, albeit not Judaic, standard. Rubel will analyze the ways in which a cookbook can be coded as Jewish, despite having no direct references to Jews or Judaism.

Speaker Bio:

Nora Rubel, the Elizabeth Denio Professor in the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of Rochester, teaches and writes on a wide variety of topics related to gender, race, and ethnicity in American religion, particularly in relation to food and popular culture. She is the author of Doubting the Devout: The Ultra-Orthodox in the Jewish American Imagination (Columbia University Press 2009) and the co-editor of Religion, Food and Eating in North America (CUP 2014) and Blessings Beyond the Binary: Transparent and the Queer Jewish Family (Rutgers University Press 2024). Her latest book is Recipes for the Melting Pot: The Lives of The Settlement Cook Book (CUP 2026).

Additional Event Information:

• This event will be held in person at Pugh Hall Ocora and also streamed live at
• The event is free to attend and open to all.
• Refreshments will be served at the conclusion of the lecture and Q&A

Parking Information:

• Parking is available in the Murphree Lot. For directions and a map, click here: https://clas.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/08/Shorstein-Event-Murphree-Lot-Map.pdf.
• You may drop off guests directly in front of Pugh Hall before proceeding to parking. Additional parking may be found in and around campus - please make sure you comply with posting parking regulations.

Questions: email [email protected]