Jewish Community Waited 4,000 Years ... for Crisco? Professor Gross Explains

THE TAKEOUT -- As Rachel B. Gross, a professor of Jewish Studies at San Francisco State University, chronicles in her article “Jews, Schmaltz and Crisco” (included in the book “Feasting And Fasting: The History Of Ethics In Jewish Food”), Proctor and Gamble hired a pair of rabbis to inspect the Crisco factory and have Crisco “chemically analyzed” to insure that it met both Jewish and scientific standards. (Gross doubts that there was an actual lab involved, but it made for good copy.) In a promotional Crisco cookbook published in 1913, the author, Marion Harris Neil, wrote, “Rabbi Margolies of New York, said that the Hebrew Race had been waiting 4,000 years for Crisco.”