How Coconut Macaroons Earned a Place on the Passover Table

During the Passover Seder, Jews eat from a table filled with symbolic food, such as bitter herbs and matzoh, thinking about their escape from Egypt. The rest of the meal for Ashkenazi Jews who trace their ancestry to Central and Eastern Europe includes traditional favorites such as potato kugel, gray lump of gefilte fish, and other dishes. At the end of the Seder, most Ashkenazim indulge in the coconut macaroon.

The coconut macaroon is a confection of egg white, sugar, and tropical fruit and has no connection to traditional Seder rituals. In the days leading up to Passover, supermarket shelves stock tins of cookies alongside matzoh and kosher wine. The story of how this unlikely treat found a place on the Seder table is also the story of a wandering people's arrival in the oasis of American consumerism. It is the story of a group of Jews who found a taste for a better life, then gave and were followed by others.

One of the things that you have to have at Passover if you are an Ashkenazi person is coconut macaroons.

One of the reasons that macaroons are popular among Jews is that their ingredients abide by Jewish restrictions. They can be eaten with meat. They don't use flour because they rely on egg whites to rise.

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The origins of macaroons stretch back to a medieval-era mingling of Arabic and Italian cooking traditions, but they didn't appear in a Jewish-American cookbook until 1871. The first Jewish cookbook published in the United States, Esther Levy's Jewish Cookery Book, includes recipes for traditional almond macaroons as well as versions that swapped dried, shredded coconut for the standard nuts. It would have seemed strange to American Jews at the time that coconut was included in cookie and cake recipes. The ingredient was difficult to acquire and would have only been available to elites.

Levy appreciated coconut macaroons for their adherence to Jewish law, but also for their sophistication. Levy writes that much confusion and trouble are saved when there is company, if servants are required to prepare.

By the time Levy wrote her cookbook, Jewish immigrants from Germanic-speaking parts of Europe had established a number of civic and religious organizations. It's impossible to know what Levy's intentions are, but Jewish Cookery's recipes for mainstream American dishes such as gumbo, waffles, and ginger snaps would fit with the group's ambitions.

Coconut was out of reach of working class Jews at the time of Levy's cookbook, but it started to change around the turn of the century. Inventions from the US and Britain developed machines that could shred and dry coconut to be shipped. The steady influx of working-class Jews from Eastern Europe began arriving in the US in the same decade, and companies capitalized on the resource and marketed it to a new demographic.

More than two million Jews were on the verge of extinction in Eastern Europe, and they felt like they couldn't go back.

As Eastern European Jews arrived in the United States, the German-Jewish community founded aid organizations to teach them life skills. Lizzie Black Kander was a German-Jewish reformer. The 1903 Settlement Cookbook was supposed to be a guide for her students. The recipes for coconut kisses were similar to coconut macaroons.

She says coconut would have been a symbol of success for the immigrants.

Coconut macaroons were promoted as a Passover treat in the 1910s. The appeal of the coconut macaroon was beyond its kosher ingredients. The department stores were owned by German Jews who had the ability to create demand for things in the Jewish community. The matzoh manufacturer Streit added premade coconut macaroons to its offerings in the 1930s.

Coconut macaroons were more popular among American Jews until World War II. In the 1935 Passover issue of the Kosher Food Guide, five different Kosher brands ofDried Fruit (shredded coconut) are featured for home bakers, compared to only one advertisement.

During World War II, Manischewitz put serious advertising heft into selling packaged macaroons for sending to Jewish troops overseas. The first Passover advertisement was in the Kosher Food Guide. The ad features almond macaroons, which were in short supply during the war. The coup it stages against home bakers seems aware of it. The ad assures readers that the macaroons are soft and delicious.

Manischewitz started to advertise coconut macaroons cans in images of modern Passovers in the 1950s. Around the same time, Jewish cookbooks were no longer filled with recipes for macaroons. There is a coconut macaroon recipe in the 497-page Jewish Cookery, published in 1949.

Americans welcomed coconut macaroons with open arms after years of coconut shortages. The New York Times reported in 1947 that shredded coconut was the reason for the return to shelves of staples that had been imported before the war.

The sense of normal has grown into nostalgia. The coconut macaroons are still sold in cans, a representative says, because they feel that it is the traditional way.

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