The story of Passover was recounted to me and my siblings every year by my father, Bruce, towering above us at the head of my mother’s elegantly adorned table, a vision of crystal cutlery and freshly picked lilacs from our garden. “Why is this night different than all other nights?” my little brother, the youngest, was expected to ask. Everything about the Passover meal looks and smells different, and for us kids it was the one night where my father commanded our undivided attention. Full of anticipation, we always knew what he was about to say and there was something prevailing about the repetition in his discourse: “What you children don’t realise, is that we were slaves in Egypt not for hundreds, but thousands, of years. Now that’s a lot of suffering.” His message on Passover, which begins this year on Saturday April 19 is that while we feast on strange, salty foods and tell stories around the dinner table, we remember our freedom and have empathy for those who still suffer.

For Britain’s 300,000 Jews, Passover, or Pesach, in Hebrew, is a spring festival that commemorates the story of how the Israelites escaped slavery and oppression from Egypt as described in the book of Exodus. Every year Jews re-tell the story known as the Haggadah (Hebrew for ‘to tell’) at a highly symbolic ceremony with family, friends and loved ones.

The most anticipated part of Passover is the structured seder meal, a layered feast with food and wine that involves singing, story telling, and family rituals that are special to the holiday. And while on Easter parents were hiding Easter eggs out in the garden for children to seek, on Passover Jewish children go on an eager hunt for the coveted afikomen, a hidden piece of matzo which is concealed by the adults during the meal.

Matzo is the unleavened bread that looks and tastes like a flat cracker. It is dry and bland, and eaten at Passover to remember how the Israelites did not have time to let their dough rise when they fled Egypt. Other elements of the meal include a tasty dish of chopped apples, nuts and wine known as haroset (which represents the mortar used by the Israelites in bondage), four cups of wine to represent God’s four promises of redemption to the Jewish people, and bitter herbs to eat in remembrance of the sorrowful years of slavery and suffering.

Beyond this the food rituals on the Passover holiday are quite varied from one family to the next. To find out more I spoke to four women from diverse Jewish practices and backgrounds about the foods they prepare and what they all mean. I started by asking my mother, Katherine, who prides herself on the fact that her matzo balls are light and fluffy:

Katherine Duchen Smith is a paediatric nurse practitioner and mother of four. She is a member of a Reform Jewish congregation in Ft Collins, Colorado, USA

“People say that my matzo ball soup recipe has a healing quality. My mother, Agnes Louise Duchen, died of lung cancer when I was twenty-two. She never had the chance to show me how to make it, but now when I prepare it I think of her. After she passed away I found her old recipe box in the house where we grew up. In it was a recipe for homemade chicken soup that my grandmother brought from Germany when she emigrated to the US to seek freedom from the Nazis. Our family’s German Jewish, Ashkenazi heritage correlates with the foods we prepare for Passover. Together with the chicken soup recipe I make homemade matzo balls from scratch. The trickiest part is making them light so that they float; I don’t like it when they sink to the bottom of the bowl like rocks. With the broth and stewed chicken I simply add some sliced carrots and fresh parsley.

The sweets I prepare for Passover remind me of the way it smelt in my grandmother’s kitchen. She and my grandfather used to speak to each other in Yiddish so we kids could not understand what they were saying. Her recipe, which my kids love, is chocolate chip meringue cookies made with egg whites and sugar. On Passover the tradition is not to eat bread or yeast, so we bake sweets that do not require flour. It’s a quick recipe to make, which for us on Passover symbolizes how the Jews had to leave in a hurry when they fled from bondage Egypt, or in my grandmother’s case, from Nazi Germany.”

Brenda Rouse is a publisher and mother of two. She attends a Traditional Orthodox congregation in Muswell Hill

“My fondest Passover memory is the first time my son Ben, the youngest, had to stand up in front of the table and sing the ‘four questions’ – “Why is this night different from all other nights?” His voice cracked, poor thing, and I was grinning all over, remembering how it felt when I was the youngest person at the Seder. Now Ben is 15, and he knows the songs by heart. Passover for me is a lovely time to reflect. I come from a Traditional Orthodox upbringing so what matters just as much as the food we eat is the way I prepare it. I remember how my mother, who grew up in Poland, was always fastidious about getting the house ready the night before. She would clean and clean until two or three o’clock in the morning. While I am not as strict as my mother was I like to perpetuate and secure a similar ritual in my home. Any food in my kitchen that is not specifically kosher [food that is allowed by Jewish dietary law] for Passover I put away in a separate cupboard. Since we observe the Passover diet for eight long days [in the Orthodox Jewish tradition] I keep the food at our Seder straightforward. I serve a vegetable soup, chicken breasts for the main dish and hard boiled eggs with salt water. We eat the eggs because they represent the offerings in the Temple and the salt water because it is a symbol of the tears of slavery.”

Ruth Finkel is a teacher's aid and mother of one. She is a member of a Sephardic congregation in Central London

“I learnt how to cook for Passover by watching my mother in our house in Gibraltar. She would not measure anything; she would just go by what the food looks like. She taught me that’s the Jewish way. The foods we prepare are specific to our Sephardic Jewish tradition. The day before our Passover meal my mother made the haroset with brick dust. The first time I saw her do it I was a little worried. Literally, she showed me how to shave small crumbs from a brick and add it to the mix of nuts and fruit and eat it like that. The bricks are a symbol of slavery, which is what we are really thinking about during the meal. Many Sephardic Jews [Spanish Jews who originate from around the Mediterranean and the Middle East] eat rice on Passover, but in Gibraltar we did not. For a main course we have ‘Tortada de Aselgas’, a spinach Mediterranean dish that resembles a Greek spanakopita. To make it I wet the matzo, add spinach, eggs, garlic and grated cheese, layer it with another sheet of wet matzo and bake it. For dessert I prepare a ‘torta frita’, which is Spanish for fried matzo. I wet the matzo with water and eggs, fry it, and serve it with warm sugar syrup. For me, preparing Passover food is about remembering where I come from and keeping my heritage alive.”