Gil Marks embraces Jewish foods from across the globe. A rabbi and historian, he tracks the history and evolution of a culture through its food.

Some serious chops in the kitchen, paired with a talent for obscure facts, led this self-taught chef and former social worker to writing cookbooks, including 2004's James Beard Award-winning "Olive Trees and Honey: A Treasury of Vegetarian Recipes from Jewish Communities Around the World."

While Marks was talking with an editor, she teased that he was a walking encyclopedia. The seed was planted.

Marks spent the next three years pulling together two decades of research, creating "The Encyclopedia of Jewish Food" (Wiley, September 2010, $40), a comprehensive guide to Jewish foods and culinary traditions. Marks guides readers through history with tasty tidbits and 300 recipes. He posts seasonal recipes and blogs at gilmarks.com/wordpress.

Q. Your mother gave you a push into the kitchen?

A. Basically, my mother takes credit for my abilities. She says when I was younger, I used to complain about her food all the time. She would say, "If you don't like what I do, make your own." I was the type that did.

Q. How did you come to write an encyclopedia?

A. I like to cook. I like to write. I started Kosher Gourmet magazine, . . . which ran for six, almost seven years. . . . My first cookbook, "The World of Jewish Cooking" was a James Beard finalist, and it's still being sold at cookbook stores almost 14 years later. . . .

Q. What was the most difficult part of compiling information?

A. The hardest part . . . was having to cut things out. We had to keep it in one manageable volume. Recipes we did include were added because they were so classic you had to do them, like challah. Others helped illuminate a topic. I had to leave out thousands of recipes.

Q. How do you qualify something as Jewish food?

A. It's a difficult question. More Jews today eat salsa and sushi than they do schmaltz and shlishkes (Hungarian potato dumplings). . . . It is almost always food that is sanctified by its use on the Sabbath or on holidays or is connected in some way with the Jewish culture. . . . It is food that has become tradition.

Q. Are there any foods that are found in all Jewish homes?

A. Yes and no. These foods vary. They're not identical. You'll find Sabbath stews in most Jewish communities, but they'll be different in the ingredients and textures. . . .

You will have matzo (unleavened bread), but in the Yemenite and Central Asian and Middle Eastern communities, many still make the old-fashioned soft matzo, as opposed to the European hard matzos that are prevalent in American today.

Q. What are some of the more surprising food facts?

A. The very first product to ever have kosher certification in 1870 was soap, in Lithuania. European soap was based upon lard, which wasn't kosher, so you couldn't use it in the kitchen. . . .

In 1981, Entenmann's Brooklyn-based bakery decided to put all their products under kosher supervision. They were so successful that kosher became a marketing tool in American food, and now you have 150,000 foods with kosher supervision.

Q. Worldwide, do you see doughnuts replacing latkes for Hanukkah?

A. The emergence of the jelly doughnut took place in Israel in the 1920s because the Jewish labor federation was looking for business for their members.

Anybody can make a latke at home. Making a jelly doughnut is more complicated. . . . What the labor federation figured was they'd have at least two good weeks of work.

Q. Why is Jewish food important?

A. Nothing touches a community or an individual's life more than food. To know a community is to know its food.

History is vital to any community. To know the history, to understand it, food tells you not just where you came from, but where you're going.

- Kristine M. Kierzek, special to the Journal Sentinel