Leah Koenig is the award-win­ning author of eight cook­books and the pop­u­lar newslet­ter The Jew­ish Table. For her lat­est cook­book, The Dessert Table, she has returned to the world of Jew­ish sweets fea­tured in her 2019 cook­book Lit­tle Book of Jew­ish Sweets—this time with quadru­ple the num­ber of recipes.

The Dessert Table is very ambi­tious, com­pris­ing one hun­dred dif­fer­ent sweets recipes from many dif­fer­ent tra­di­tions: Ashke­nazi, Sephar­di, Mid­dle Eastern/​Mizrahi, and else­where in the Jew­ish dias­po­ra. Koenig’s goal seems to be to cel­e­brate the dias­po­ra and the recipes that have come from all over the world to reach the States. Case in point: the intro­duc­tion fea­tures a love­ly illus­trat­ed map show­ing the pri­ma­ry place of ori­gin for many recipes fea­tured lat­er in the book, among them melk­ert (milk tart) from South Africa, marunchi­no almond cook­ies from Spain, and choco­late-cin­na­mon palmiers from France.

Despite the book’s ambi­tion, the recipes them­selves are not over­ly com­pli­cat­ed and are pre­sent­ed in an invit­ing way, with lush pho­tog­ra­phy and ingre­di­ents that can large­ly be found in any super­mar­ket. The struc­ture of the book moves from cook­ies and bars to cakes all the way to dough­nuts and bab­ka, and ice cream and dessert drinks. Some recipes fea­ture a twist on a clas­sic (deli­cious-sound­ing caramelized white choco­late – lime bab­ka or oat­meal – sour cher­ry haman­taschen) while oth­ers are more unex­pect­ed alto­geth­er, such as con­cord grape soda and flan (with no crust, it is ​“nat­u­ral­ly Passover-friend­ly”). Seem­ing­ly on Koenig’s mind is ele­vat­ing the desserts she enjoyed at syn­a­gogue in her youth, which were often ​“dry, over­ly sweet, and just gen­er­al­ly ersatz.” Notably, all of the recipes fol­low kosher law; many are also pareve in that they con­tain no meat or dairy, or there are sim­ple sub­sti­tu­tions that Koenig has been thought­ful to outline.

It is indeed a very thought­ful cook­book, geared toward the home cook who would like to expand their bak­ing reper­toire or have a use­ful recipe on hand for any old day, or a hol­i­day — Koenig fea­tures a list of the Jew­ish hol­i­days ear­ly in the book, with some recipe sug­ges­tions. A recipe is nev­er just a recipe, she seems to sug­gest, as they are often imbued with tra­di­tion or sym­bol­ism; for exam­ple, the apples and sweets eat­en on Rosh Hashanah form an ​“edi­ble sym­bol of one’s hopes for a sweet year ahead.”

Among the most enjoy­able aspects of The Dessert Table are the short his­to­ry essays woven into the book. One describes the Jew­ish involve­ment in the ear­ly choco­late indus­try in France; anoth­er delves into the piv­otal role that Sephar­di Jews of the fif­teenth and six­teenth cen­turies played in help­ing the Dutch set up the cane sug­ar indus­try in Brazil (before being expelled in the 1630s). Sim­i­lar­ly, Koenig dis­cuss­es the Jew­ish ori­gins of many Amer­i­can can­dies (includ­ing ever-pop­u­lar Toot­sie Rolls and Bazooka gum). These sweet details are tan­ta­lis­ing enough that they could like­ly fill whole books of their own, but their brief inclu­sion is wel­come and roots what could seem like frothy recipes to their wider history.