Although schmaltz originated as a German culinary term, it achieved wide currency in English thanks to American jazz musicians. In German, where it is spelt schmalz, the word refers to animal fat, especially chicken fat rendered so that it may be more easily used in cooking. First borrowed by Yiddish, the word schmalz was brought to North America by Jewish immigrants, and was then picked up in the 1930s by jazz hip-cats, who used it to describe music that was mainstream and cloying instead of cool and edgy. By the 1960s the word had moved beyond the realm of jazz and was being used to describe almost anything—novels, movies, salesmen—that was maudlin and unctuous in nature. Although this metaphorical sense now dominates the word, schmaltz can still be used in English in its original fat sense, as in schmalz herring, a kind of oily pickled herring. In English, schmaltz’s closest cousin is smelt, the action of melting ore in order to extract the metal.