Nostalgia Sunday

June 15, 2008 - 3:45 PM by

“I think I’ll write about the Wonder Pot,” I told my office-mate today.
“Wonder Pot? What’s that?” she replied.

How the mighty have fallen. The Wonder Pot, once a staple component in any new immigrant to Israel’s aliya kit, has been relegated to the footnotes of cookery history, with even native Israelis referring to any old bundt pan as a “seer pele”. But any old bunt pan is not a Wonder Pot, as one can plainly see from this picture right here.

Wonder Pot - open and closed
Images courtesy of Wikipedia

First of all, it is a lot more unattractive than a bundt pan – and the photos doesn’t show the rusty heat dispersal ring resting between the burner and the pot – really one of the things that put me off using the Wonder Pot for several months when first I arrived in the early 80s. It seemed like a throwback to the 50s, which it was, and not in a good way.

But, in those dark pre-microwave days, other people kept raving about this miraculous stove-top oven that allowed one to bake cakes and casseroles without an oven. In fact, you could bake ding-dang anything in a Wonder Pot, as long as you didn’t mind an entire table laid out with ring after ring of circular fare. And if you weren’t sure what to make, you could always refer to Sybil Zimmerman’s best-seller The Wonders Of a Wonder Pot, a bookshelf standard at the time, along with the Moosewood Cookbook.

Wonder Pot cookbook is greater than or equal to Moosewood Cookbook

More images of the Wonder Pot and other bits of Israeli kitchenalia (yes, there really is such a word) may be found here.

So what happened to the wonderous Wonder Pot? Israelis got baking ovens, says celebrity chef and cookbook author Phyllis Glazer. “As fuel became more available and ovens became more available people realized they could make greater quantities in faster time, instead of slow-cooking on the stove top. And it also became associated with the austerity regime (tzena) and poor people.”

“Personally, I have very fond memories of the Wonder Pot,” Glazer says. “I never saw anything like it before I came to Israel. It was revolutionary for me, coming from the United States. I didn’t see it as primitive! For me, it was a very interesting scientific thing.”

In a recent wonder(pot)ful developlment, a new housewares store called “Seer Pele” has opened in Jerusalem’s Talpiot industrial zone. So the legacy of the Wonder Pot lives on (even though young Israelis think it’s a bundt pan).

Tags: , , • Category: Food, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture 

Comments

17 Comments on Nostalgia Sunday

  1. Roxanne on Sun, Jun 15th 2008 8:47 PM

    2. Boy, I guess we have been in Israel a long time!
    I loved the ‘circularl fare’

    roxanne

  2. Linda on Mon, Jun 16th 2008 8:07 AM

    3. I miss the Wonder Pot!! My roommate made great cakes on the stove — it was such a treat, when we didn’t even have a real oven. It reminds me of the days when my grandmother made her sponge cakes for Pesach and left them drying upside down on a Coke bottle. There’s just something about a cake with a hole in it.

  3. faye on Mon, Jun 16th 2008 12:46 PM

    4. I admit that the wonder pot was like a sir lachatz (pressure cooker) to me — completely foreign and terrifying — and I absolutely never used one. indeed, I didn’t back a cake for almost ten years simply because I didn’t have an oven. luckily I had good friends who were ready to feed me!

  4. varda on Tue, Jun 17th 2008 10:16 AM

    5. i remember a particularly tasty sheperd’s pie baked for me in a wonderpot some time in the 80′s. no sheperd’s pie has ever lived up to the one i ate with a hole in it.

  5. Bunny on Mon, Jul 21st 2008 9:05 AM

    6. When we first came to Israel, my mom was introduced to the Sir Pele by my Israeli cousins who all used it, MY MOM was the “rich American” who actually had an oven so we didn’t usually need it but I remember many great cakes at my aunt’s homes made with that pot.

  6. Nechama on Thu, Jul 31st 2008 11:40 PM

    7. My mom has told me about one she had in Israel back in the late 60s/early70s. She never had any instructions on how to use it. So she never did. Friends of hers made these amazing cakes in it. Does anyone have directions or could share the basics on how to use it? Are there recipes? Any special instructions?! :)

    Thank you!!!

  7. Rob on Thu, Jan 8th 2009 2:00 AM

    8. I’ve kept mine for use on camping trips; I have a small single burner propane device that I fit the rusty burner plate on. And I still use my old Sybil Zimmerman cookbooks from time to time too. I picked mine up in the shuk in Be’er Sheva in the mid 70′s.

  8. Lynne on Fri, Jan 9th 2009 10:56 PM

    9. I just found a wonder pot that I had given to my mother back in the ’70s. She used it once and then put it in the attic. I want to sell it. How can I find an appreciative cook who will know what it is and how to use it?

  9. Sybil Kaplan on Tue, Jan 13th 2009 8:32 PM

    10. I am “the Sybil” who wrote the Wonder Pot cookbook and I loved all your comments. Someone just sent it to me (today is January 13, 2009) and I now live in Jerusalem with my wonder pots returned.

    If any of you are publishers, please contact me. I have a “from the best of…”
    cookbook ready to be published with recipes from Wonderpot, Budget and From My Jerusalem Kitchen.

    By the way, wonder pots are alive and well in Jerusalem’s Machaneh Yehudah!

  10. Klara Le Vine on Wed, Oct 21st 2009 10:32 PM

    11. Sybil,

    so glad you’re still in J’lm and keeping the wonders of the Wonderpot alive. I remember my kibbutz mother making her special Friday cakes for us. Somehow the 70′s were better and more innocent times or do people always look to the past with nostalgia?

  11. Charlotte Grossman on Sun, Nov 1st 2009 3:31 AM

    12. Is there any where I can order Wonder Pot from Israel? It would be great to find one in Northern California!

  12. jeff karlin on Tue, Nov 3rd 2009 2:03 AM

    13. hi sybil,
    wnat to make a trip to mahane yehuda and be my agent to send me a wonder pot?
    i cannot find one in the usa. i can pay you via paypal fo rhe wonder pot.
    funnily enough, my oven is on the blink and it would, among other reasons, be really nice to have a w.p.
    also, where can one purchase your :my jerusalem kitchen”.
    does anyone have a clue how one can purchase a wonder pot here in the usa?
    it shouldn’t be this hard, but i never see one for sale on ebay or elsewhere.
    i wonder if they are now made teflon coated and in stainless.
    thanks.

  13. jeff karlin on Tue, Nov 3rd 2009 2:05 AM

    14. anyone know where one can purchase a wonder pot here in the usa or who to contact in israel to have one shipped here?

  14. Charlotte Grossman on Mon, May 17th 2010 10:15 PM

    15. I see that Sybil Kaplan, who wrote the only Wonder Pot cookbook in existence, has written to this site. She is comment #9!!
    Unfortunately, the link back to her is not working for me, but I would love to hear from her and see if I can get a copy of the Wonders of the Wonder Pot cookbook she wrote. My husband found a Wonder Pot for me in Jerusalem. A NEW one. He is coming home tomorrow.
    I certainly hope it is the right thing.
    Charlotte Grossman

  15. Ann on Mon, Jul 26th 2010 2:51 AM

    16. I am from the Philippines and I do not know how, but my mother had a “wonder pot” and she loved baking those sweet goodies. I got married and took the pot with me and until its glass top broke 10 years ago. I saw a “wonder pot” in my friends kitchen that was unused, so I borrowed it last night – she was too glad to let go!!!
    Today, I baked my first banana cake – 2 layers of it. This is a start of my “Wonder Potting”.

  16. Ariella Amshalem on Sun, Jan 9th 2011 11:15 PM

    17. Rachel,
    I don’t know exactly what it was (maybe the mental image of a table laid out with various dishes all in the shape of large donuts…), but this piece made me laugh very hard.
    I just bought a sir peleh today because we returned to Israel last week, after 11 years in the States, and are in a temporary apartment with no oven– only an electric stove top.
    My mother always tells me about her sir peleh back in her and my dad’s kibbutz days, and how they used to put it on the heater to cook…
    I feel like a real new olah now.
    Thanks for this informative and highly amusing piece!
    Ariella

  17. Yakov Butterfield on Thu, Mar 28th 2013 7:50 AM

    18. The Israeli Wonder Pot סיר פלא‎ is recommended for Pesach (Passover) since most modern electric convection ovens can not be properly Koshered for Passover because of the electric fan that circulates hot air in the oven can not be properly Koshered by heat.
    We found the Wonder Pot in the Mahane Yehuda Shuk in Jerusalem near Yafo Street on the left side next to the nut and seed seller.
    You can also find it in Mega Supermarket in Talpiot, Jerusalem

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