What am I, Chopped Liver?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Christina, and I’m calling from Reno, Nevada.

How’s it going, Christina?

Welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

Thank you so much.

So I’ll just give you a little tiny backstory.

I have a 10-year-old, and I’m trying to teach her methods in the kitchen.

And it’s like pulling teeth to get her to come and help me.

So one day I asked her if she wanted to help me make tortillas.

And she said yes, surprisingly.

So I got everything ready, and my husband walks by and is like, hey, the Xbox is free.

So she goes, oh, never mind.

Not helping you, Mom.

So I was like, what? Excuse me?

And then I said, what am I, chopped liver?

And she kind of makes a face and is looking at me funny, and she doesn’t know how to answer it.

She’s like, yeah, no, I don’t know.

What is that?

So I said, well, if I thought about it, I really do.

I like chopped liver, so I guess it’s not a bad thing.

But apparently the way that I use it, it is a bad thing.

So I was just curious as to where that came from.

I know that it’s usually like chopped liver and onions is a side dish, and it’s an afterthought.

And that’s kind of how I felt at that moment.

I love it.

So for you, if you said, what am I, chopped liver, am I worthless to you?

Why am I second best or why am I low rated?

Correct. Yes, correct.

And the origin of that is interesting.

So the chopped liver in question is probably the traditional Jewish dish, at least in the United States.

And it’s not necessarily liver with onions.

It’s more likely to have chicken fat or goose fat in it and eggs and spices and a few other things.

It’s just like it’s on the table.

It’s utterly unimportant.

It’s outnumbered by the bigger, better dishes.

It’s almost a condiment.

It’s not even as important as the cranberry sauce if you have it.

You know what I’m saying?

It’s just like there on the table, you take a scoop of it, it goes with the rest of your food.

But it’s not like that.

Everyone’s not like, oh, when is the chopped liver coming out of the kitchen?

It’s just there.

Well, I am, but.

Yeah, so sometime in the 1930s or so, chopped liver started to be used in this way as the least significant thing.

And not necessarily completely negative.

Like, it’s got some importance, but it’s not as important as the other things going on around it.

And then by the late 60s, early 1970s, we start to see this particular construction of, what am I, chopped liver?

And you feel yourself falling into like a Jewish New Yorker kind of cadence when you say, I feel like Mel Brooks when I say it.

I was going to say a Borscht Belt comedian.

Yeah, a Borscht Belt comedian, definitely.

But it’s probably from the Jewish tradition, not necessarily in New York, but possibly from New York.

Okay, very cool.

I have some info for her now.

Thank you guys so much.

So, Christina, you did lose out to the Xbox, it sounds like.

That’s a hard one, tortillas versus Xbox.

Yeah, you know, I can’t compete.

I want her to be a culinarian like me, and she wants to play video games like her stepdad.

So I’ve got to find a happy balance somewhere.

The trick is to not let her have any of the homemade tortillas when you’re done.

That’s right.

Yeah, there you go.

I’ll just be withholding, and then next time if she wants them, she’ll have to help.

Yeah, have some chopped liver.

Christina, thank you so much.

Really appreciate it.

Oh, thank you. Thank you. You’re very welcome. I’ll listen to you next time.

Thanks. Bye-bye. Take care. Bye-bye.

You know, there’s a side note that I want to make here, and I mentioned that chopped liver,

You know, the recipe that I described sometimes has chicken or goose fat in it.

Do you know what the Yiddish word for that is?

Schmaltz. Schmaltz. That’s right. That’s where we get the word schmaltz,

Meaning kind of cheesy or melodramatic entertainment.

It refers back to the Yiddish word for goose fat or chicken fat.

Schmaltz. Schmaltz.

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