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Schmaltz or schmalz is rendered chicken or goose fat used for frying or as a spread on bread, in German and Jewish cuisine. Schmaltz rendered from a kosher-slaughtered chicken or goose is popular in Jewish cuisine; it was used by Northwestern and Eastern European Jews who were forbidden by dietary laws to fry their meats in butter or lard, the common forms of cooking fat in Europe, and who could not obtain the kinds of cooking oils, such as olive oil and sesame oil, that they had used in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean (as in Spain and Italy); the overfeeding of geese that Jews used to produce more fat per bird produced postclassical Europe's first foie gras as a side effect.