Gefilte fish

Gefilte fish is a ground fish recipe, popular with people of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. The fish is first deboned, often while still at the market. Next, the fish is ground into a fine paste and boiled with carrots and onions. It is often stuffed into a whole fish, giving it the name gefilte or "stuffed", although this step is often (somewhat paradoxially) omitted. It is often served with a horseradish and beet mixture, known as chrain.

Gefilte fish can be either sweet (generally among Jews of German, Austro-Hungarian and Polish descent) or seasoned with salt and pepper (common among Jews of Russian and Ukrainian descent). Traditionally, cheap fish such as carp were used to make gefilte fish, but more recently other fish with white flesh have been used, and there is even a pink variation using salmon.

An explanation for the popularity of gefilte fish is its ease of consumption on the Sabbath. Jewish law dictates that removing bones from fish falls under "seperating" (borer), one of the 39 forbidden activities on the Sabbath. Ground and bone-free fish removes this problem. This makes gefilte fish a common starter for one of the three traditional Sabbath meals.