Photo: Paradesi Synagogue interior, Kochi, Kerala. Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.5)
Julie Sahni is one of the most respected figures in the world of Indian cooking, known internationally for her groundbreaking cookbooks that brought authentic Indian cuisine to Western audiences. Her work on the Jewish food traditions of Kerala represents a significant contribution to documenting a cuisine that very few food writers outside the Indian Jewish community have explored with any depth or seriousness. When Sahni turns her attention to the Cochin Jewish kitchen, the result is both a culinary portrait and a cultural document.
The Cochin Jewish community, also known as the Malabar Jews or the Jews of Kerela, settled along the southwestern coast of India more than two thousand years ago according to community tradition. They established their most important synagogue, the Paradesi Synagogue in Kochi, in 1568, and maintained a distinct community life in the neighborhood known as Jew Town in Mattancherry for centuries. At the height of the community’s presence, Cochin Jewish cooking was shaped by the extraordinary abundance of Kerala’s spice trade: black pepper, cardamom, cloves, and cinnamon grew nearby, coconut palms were everywhere, and the backwaters provided an abundance of fresh fish and seafood.
Sahni’s exploration of Kochi cuisine for a Jewish India context highlights dishes that reflect this spice-rich environment. Coconut fish curry, slow-cooked in a pot with fresh coconut milk, green chilies, and curry leaves, is perhaps the most emblematic Cochin Jewish dish. The Cochin community’s Passover table, built around rice dishes because they follow Sephardic practice that permits kitniyot, is another area where Sahni has documented remarkable recipes: spiced rice preparations, coconut-based sweets, and the use of fresh herbs and spices in quantities that reflect Kerala’s unique agricultural wealth.
The Cochin Jewish community today numbers just a handful of families in Kochi, with most having emigrated to Israel in the decades following Israeli independence. Their recipes survive in the memories of those who emigrated and in a small body of documentation by writers and researchers like Sahni who recognized the importance of recording these traditions before they disappeared entirely from daily practice.
For anyone interested in the cooking of this ancient community, Sahni’s writing provides one of the most accessible and authoritative starting points available in English. Her attention to technique and her respect for the cultural context of the food she describes make her account of Cochin Jewish cuisine an essential resource.
Source: Kochi Cuisine: Chef Julie Sahni Shares A Taste of Jewish India
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A Living Culinary Heritage
Food has served as one of the most durable carriers of Indian Jewish identity across centuries of diaspora and migration. As communities moved from India to Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, they carried their recipes with them — adjusting for ingredient availability but preserving the essential character of dishes refined over generations.
In the Cochin Jewish community of Kerala, the act of cooking traditional dishes is understood as a form of cultural continuity. It connects the present generation to grandmothers who stood at similar stoves, worked with similar spices, and fed families who observed the same Shabbat and celebrated the same holidays. The kitchen becomes a space of memory and identity, where the full complexity of Indian Jewish experience can be tasted in a single dish.
Preserving the Recipe, Preserving the Culture
The documentation of Indian Jewish recipes has become an urgent priority as the communities that created them continue to shrink. In 1948, before the establishment of the State of Israel, there were an estimated 30,000 Jews living in India. Today, fewer than 5,000 remain, most of them elderly. The younger generations have largely emigrated to Israel, where they maintain some connection to their Indian heritage while integrating into Israeli society.
Cookbooks, food blogs, and community archives have played a crucial role in preserving these recipes. Works like “Bene Appetit: The Cuisine of Indian Jews” and various community-produced recipe collections represent efforts by Indian Jewish families to document their culinary traditions before they are lost. Food writers and ethnographers have also contributed by interviewing elderly community members and recording not just the recipes but the stories and memories surrounding them.
For the Indian Jewish diaspora, cooking these dishes is an act of cultural maintenance — a way of honoring ancestors and transmitting identity to children who may have grown up in Tel Aviv, New York, or London, far from Mumbai, Cochin, or Kolkata where their grandparents lived. The food becomes a bridge between generations and across geographies, carrying the taste of a world that is gradually disappearing but whose flavors refuse to be forgotten.