ABOUT AND CONTACT

who am i?

I’m Emily Sacharin, the founder of Poppy and Prune. A writer, researcher, and unabashed foodie, I started this Jewish food history blog to document my explorations of global Jewish food history and culture, from the biblical era to the present.

I’ve been fascinated by the question of what people in the past ate ever since learning about the Columbian Exchange as a child. Imagine—Italian food without tomatoes? Irish cuisine without potatoes? I wanted to know what the “authentic” diets of these and other places looked like, and how world cuisines as we know them became what they are today.

why jewish food history?

After spending time learning about the histories of cuisines from Mesopotamia to Mexico, I eventually settled my focus on my own heritage. While my background is run-of-the-mill Ashkenazi with a little bit of pre-expulsion Sephardi thrown in for good measure, I’m interested in Jewish food history and customs from around the world.

I’m passionate about reviving the flavors of the past, the more obscure the better, as well as exploring contemporary Jewish food cultures in New York City and beyond. There’s something incredibly poignant about recreating something as concrete as food from worlds that have, in many cases, completely vanished. As rockstar Jewish food historian Eve Jochnowitz said of her work preparing her (fabulous) translation of The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook, cooking historical Jewish recipes can yield not only delicious (or, at the least, interesting) taste but  “a conversation and a communion” with lost worlds.

Why Poppy and prune?

I’d been searching long and hard for a name more interesting than, say, Jewish History Kitchen when Poppy and Prune came to me on the drive to my grandfather’s funeral. The friends who generously gave me a ride stopped to pick up some babka, and we got to discussing our preferred flavors. I said mine was poppy, old lady flavor preference as that may be, and that brought us back to my grandfather. An exceedingly progressive, modern, and decidedly un-elderly older person in most respects, he was known for his love of the most old-fashioned of pastries: the prune Danish. In that moment, it all came together.

thanks for stopping by!

If you’d like to collaborate, chat Jewish food, or share a recipe or food tradition on my Jewish food history blog, I’d love to hear from you at poppyandprune@gmail.com.