Friday
The Muslim congregational day with jummah meals, the Jewish Shabbat eve, Lakshmi's day in India, and fish on Christian Fridays.
Friday has the most layered food calendar of the week. For Muslims it is Jummah, the day of the congregational prayer, with a family lunch afterwards. For Jews, Friday evening begins Shabbat with chicken soup and challah. For many Hindus it is the day of Lakshmi and Santoshi Mata, and for Christians a day of abstinence from meat. Each tradition has its characteristic spice.
Jummah lunch
After the noon prayer, many Muslim households share a meal that is richer than usual: biryani and korma in South Asia, couscous with seven vegetables in the Maghreb, mansaf in Jordan, or machboos in the Gulf. These are slow cooked and perfumed with cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, turmeric and dried lime. Attar of rose or sandalwood is worn to the mosque in some communities.
Shabbat eve and Friday night
Jewish families prepare for Shabbat with food cooked before sundown: chicken soup with turnip and dill, kugel with cinnamon and pepper, and in Sephardi and Mizrahi homes, cholent or hamin, slow-cooked overnight with cumin, turmeric, paprika, cinnamon and cardamom, or Moroccan dafina with ras el hanout. Spice jars on the Friday table are part of the preparation.
Friday vrat, Lakshmi and Santoshi Mata
Hindu women fast on Fridays in honour of Lakshmi or Santoshi Mata, eating food made with jaggery and roasted gram while avoiding sour foods such as tamarind and pickle in the Santoshi Mata vrat. Kheer perfumed with cardamom and saffron is an offering. The custom is unusual in forbidding a flavour rather than prescribing one.
Fish on Fridays
Roman Catholics historically abstained from meat on Fridays, and fish with parsley, pepper and mustard, kedgeree with curry spice in Britain, or bacalhau with paprika in Portugal became the habitual food. Kedgeree is a Victorian adaptation of the Indian khichdi.
The spices
Written by the EveryMasala 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.
- Ras el hanout: Sarefo, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Cumin: Sanjay Acharya, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Cardamom: Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Saffron: Hubertl, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Cinnamon: Luc Viatour, CC BY-SA 3.0, source