Jewish History of the Crock Pot
From the Washington Jewish Week 2-9-17:
"Slow cookers have a Jewish origin. Their inventor, Irving Naxon, grew up listening to his mother tell stories about cholent, a bean-based Sabbath stew that cook all day, a traditional dish among Jews from central and Eastern Europe.
Every Friday evening, the Jewish women in his mother's Lithuanian village assembled meat, potatoes, vegetables and beans in heavy pots and brought them to the bakery. As the oven was turned off for the Sabbath, the pots were placed inside so they could simmer in the waning heat and provide a warm meal the following night.
In 1936, Naxon aplied for a patent for a food-heating machine featuring an insert that distributed heat evenly. By 1940, he received a patent and named his machine the Naxon Beanery. In the 1970s, he sold his patent to Rival Manufacturing, which marketed it as the Crock Pot--and the rest is history."
Has anyone ever seen a Naxon Beanery?
A baker's oven was not turned off. It was not fueled during the Sabbath, but did not cool much in those 25 hours because people expected bread on Sunday so baking began after the Sabbath ended on Saturday night.
Bakers working at night are said to have heard the tunneling invaders and reported the noise, saving the city of either Buda (later Budapest) or Vienna from Turks tunneling under the walls. The baker made the victory pastries in the shape of the Islamic Crescent and thus Croissants were born:
<h3><span id="Origin_stories" class="mw-headline">Origin stories</span></h3>
Stories of how the Kipferl — and so, ultimately, the croissant — was created are widespread and persistent culinary legends, going back to the 19th century.<sup id="cite_ref-schimmer_12-0" class="reference">
[12]</sup> However, there are no contemporary sources for any of these stories, and an aristocratic writer, writing in 1799, does not mention the Kipferl in a long and extensive list of breakfast foods.<sup id="cite_ref-13" class="reference">
[13]</sup>
The legends include tales that it was invented in Europe to celebrate the defeat of the
Umayyad forces by the
Franks at the
Battle of Tours in 732, with the shape representing the Islamic
crescent; that it was invented in
Buda; or, according to other sources, in
Vienna in 1683 to celebrate the defeat of the
Ottomans by Christian forces in the
siege of the city, as a reference to the crescents on the
Ottoman flags, when bakers staying up all night heard the tunneling operation and gave the alarm.<sup id="cite_ref-schimmer_12-1" class="reference">
[12]</sup>
The above-mentioned
Alan Davidson proposed that the Islamic origin story originated with 20th-century writer Alfred Gottschalk, who gave two versions, one in the
Larousse Gastronomique and the other in his
History of Food and Gastronomy:<sup id="cite_ref-Gottschalk1948_14-0" class="reference">
[14]</sup>
<blockquote class="templatequote">
According to one of a group of similar legends, which vary only in detail, a baker of the 17th century, working through the night at a time when his city (either Vienna in 1683 or Budapest in 1686) was under siege by the Turks, heard faint underground rumbling sounds which, on investigation, proved to be caused by a Turkish attempt to invade the city by tunnelling under the walls. The tunnel was blown up. The baker asked no reward other than the exclusive right to bake crescent-shaped pastries commemorating the incident, the crescent being the symbol of Islam. He was duly rewarded in this way, and the croissant was born. The story seems to owe its origin, or at least its wide diffusion, to Alfred Gottschalk, who wrote about the croissant for the first edition [1938] of the
Larousse Gastronomique and there gave the legend in the Turkish attack on Budapest in 1686 version; but on the history of food, opted for the 'siege of Vienna in 1683' version.<sup id="cite_ref-15" class="reference">
[15]</sup>
<cite>— Alan Davidson,
Oxford Companion to Food</cite>
</blockquote>
This has led to croissants being banned by some
Islamic fundamentalists.<sup id="cite_ref-16" class="reference">
[16]</sup>
