Saturday
Shabbat morning bourekas with cheese, Rome's tripe with pecorino, and the weekend market cheese stall.
Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath, the weekly market day of many European towns, and in Rome's old weekly menu the day of tripe. Each has cheese in its customs, from the bourekas eaten after synagogue to the pecorino over a Roman stew and the farm cheeses sold in market squares.
Shabbat morning
Since no cooking is done on the Sabbath, its meals are prepared on Friday. In Sephardi and Israeli homes, Shabbat morning often brings bourekas, flaky pastries filled with white cheese or feta, served with hard-boiled eggs that have cooked slowly overnight. Ashkenazi kiddush tables after synagogue often have cake, herring and, in dairy communities, kugel. Lunch is usually a meat meal, so the cheese comes first.
Sabato trippa
The Roman weekly saying ends with tripe on Saturday. Trippa alla romana is stewed in tomato sauce with mint and finished with a generous grating of pecorino romano, the sharp, salty sheep's cheese of Lazio.
Market day
Across Europe, Saturday is the main market day for farm produce, and the cheese stall is often the busiest: farmhouse cheeses from local dairies, cut to order and sold by people who know the farm.
Traditions
- Shabbat bourekas: Cheese pastries for the Sabbath morning.
- Sabato trippa: Rome's Saturday tripe with pecorino.
- Saturday market: The weekend market stall of farm cheeses.
The cheeses
Sources and further reading
Written by the EveryCheese desk with AI assistance. Customs differ by community and family, and are described here as tradition, not instruction. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Pecorino Romano: Jon Sullivan, Public domain, source
- Feta: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0, source