Corned Beef and Cabbage Is so Jewish

As a Jewish kid in New York, I grew up eating corned beef on rye from delis such as P.J. Bernstein's, Katz's, Carnegie and Stage. The first time I tasted corned beef and cabbage, it seemed so familiar, it didn't occur to me that it wasn't part of the Ashkenazi culinary cannon.

Of course I'm not the only one to have noticed the connection. According to an article in Smithsonian magazine by Shaylyn Esposito, Irish immigrants to the U.S. in the mid 19th century, most of whom first settled in New York City, often bought their meat from kosher butchers.