Man Insists On Using Only Potatoes In Latkes, ‘Like The Maccabees Made Them’

“Latke” originates in a Slavic term, derived ultimately from Greek word for oil – which, in turn, stems from the Greek for “olive.”

Jerusalem, December 30 – A local food snob expressed disdain again this year for anyone who “corrupts” their fried Hanukkah pancakes with ingredients that never featured in the original recipes ancient Jews prepared for the festival, determined to stick with the simple oil, potatoes, eggs, and seasonings that the Jews of second-century-BCE Judea must have used to celebrate the miracle of the oil.

Potatoes existed only in the Americas until the fifteenth century CE.

“Eat them the way Judah the Maccabee intended, with just potatoes,” insisted Elishama Ben-Yair, 40. “Sour cream is fine, because there was cream available during the Second Temple Era, but apple sauce is a no-no, because apples didn’t reach the Levant from further east in Asia until later.”

Potatoes and other tubers reached the Old World only during the Age of Exploration, and even then, took several centuries to catch on as a staple of the cuisine. This “Columbian Exchange” transformed Italian, Eastern European, and Mediterranean cooking into their familiar modern forms, with the introduction of tomatoes, as well, playing an important role in the process. However, Ben-Yair wishes that people would at least maintain awareness that the Maccabees would never have added sweet potato to their latkes, nor fried them in canola oil, since neither of those products was available in ancient Israel.

“You can like that stuff without corrupting the festival,” he argued. “Eat it some other day of the year. Don’t pretend the Hasmoneans put granulated sugar and their latkes. Sugar as a standalone ingredient wouldn’t be available for many centuries.”

The latke originated in Eastern Europe over the last several centuries as potatoes did finally achieve staple status there; the word comes from a Slavic term for the dish, derived ultimately from a Greek word for oil – which, in turn, stems from the Greek for “olive.” But such connections do not impress Ben-Yair.

“Etymology doesn’t mean anything in this case,” he retorted. “Words refer to things, but they aren’t those things. Give me potatoes and olive oil, some eggs and salt, maybe some flour, and I can recreate what Judah and his brothers ate to celebrate Hanukkah. That’s the authentic latke. Leave your jelly donuts for some other time. Powdered sugar wasn’t a thing! Stop with the anachronisms.”

“We face enough trouble with people calling Jesus ‘Palestinian,'” he added. “Jesus wouldn’t know what a Palestinian was. It’s like calling Pocahontas a resident of the Confederacy. Same with the latkes. Don’t project your ketchup onto them, either.”

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