The Hanukkah miracle in a pan: raw potato grated and squeezed dry with onion, bound with egg and a spoonful of flour, dropped into hot oil and pressed flat until the edges crackle and the centre steams through: the most emotionally loaded potato pancake in the world, fried in oil to remember the lamp that burned for eight days
Origin: Eastern Europe / United States
From the journey of Potato.
The latke (לאַטקע in Yiddish; from the Ukrainian 'oladka', a small pancake) is the most culturally resonant food of Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine and the defining dish of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights. The theological connection is fundamental: Hanukkah commemorates the miracle of a single day's oil burning for eight days in the Temple in Jerusalem (c. 164 BCE); the tradition of eating foods fried in oil at Hanukkah is the direct expression of this miracle. In Eastern Europe (Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Romania), where Ashkenazi Jews had lived since the medieval period, the potato latke replaced earlier cheese and oil-fried pancake traditions when the potato became the dominant carbohydrate crop in the 18th century. The grated potato latke: squeezed dry of its liquid, mixed with grated onion, egg, and flour, and fried in shimmering hot schmaltz (rendered chicken or goose fat) or oil until crispy and brown; became the canonical Hanukkah food of Eastern European Jewry. When millions of Eastern European Jews emigrated to the United States in the great wave of 1880–1924, they brought the latke to New York's Lower East Side, where it became one of the foundational dishes of American Jewish cooking. Today, the debate over latke toppings; sour cream (sauerrahmfrische) vs. apple sauce (applesauce); is conducted with more passion in American Jewish households than almost any theological question.
Schmaltz, rendered chicken or goose fat, was the traditional frying fat for Ashkenazi Jewish cooking in Eastern Europe, where the prohibition on mixing meat and dairy (kashrut) meant that butter could not be used with meat, and olive oil was expensive and unavailable. Schmaltz fried latkes have a depth of flavour that vegetable oil cannot replicate; it is now available in specialty delis and some supermarkets. The 'schmaltz vs. vegetable oil' debate among Jewish cooks is nearly as heated as the 'sour cream vs. applesauce' debate. Both are valid. The Hanukkah tradition of fried foods (latkes in Ashkenazi communities; sufganiyot, jelly doughnuts, in Israel and Sephardic communities) is one of the clearest examples in world food culture of a religious practice directly shaping a culinary tradition.
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