There is a hint of schmaltz, in the best possible sense—an unabashed emotionalism that puts meat on the bones of the music without violating its essential spirit. Louise T. Guinthe
… the arrangements balanced smoky jazz and soft pop without turning to abstraction or schmaltz.Rolling Stone (online)
Steven Moffat has written a heart-warming drama, free of schmaltz and sentiment … Patrick Mulkern
A sprinkling of schmaltz is expected—nay, needed—in an emotional extravaganza like this, and you couldn't put together a better cast … Brian Truitt
3
: rendered animal fat and especially chicken fat
When it's properly made, schmaltz has a brawny, roasted character that comes from the bits of poultry skin that brown in the pan. Melissa Clark
"Schmaltz is a basic tenet of Jewish culture. In the real kosher home you couldn't use butter if you were eating meat, so you had schmaltz." Stan Zimmerman
There's also the schmaltz (rendered chicken fat) vs. vegetable oil debate. Tastier matzo balls are made with schmaltz. John Kessler
… if Mr. [Victor] Young's scores for The Uninvited, Love Letters, and My Foolish Heart are schmaltz, then my musical taste is unabashedly schmaltzy. Andrew Sarris
The movie has too much schmaltz for me. the love song was a typical example of overproduced schmaltz
Recent Examples on the WebPlopped into the middle is a dense, lumpy matzo ball studded with dill and fattened with schmaltz. Jenn Harriscolumnist, Los Angeles Times, 6 July 2022 The schmaltz is applied with a trowel in depicting his relationship with the briskly efficient Marge, who admires her husband’s brain but has lately been craving a little more romance. David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 15 June 2022 Starker never wanted a moment of schmaltz, and Sebők never wanted to show off. Simon Callow, The New York Review of Books, 6 Apr. 2022 Other than a forest fire, Audrey Hepburn as an angel and a golden schmaltz that might be Spielberg’s most egregious case of phoning it in. Christopher Borrelli, chicagotribune.com, 24 Mar. 2022 Reviewers in Dickens’s time generally did not complain about what modern readers find hard to process: the melodrama, the rhetorical overkill, the staggering load of schmaltz.The New Yorker, 28 Feb. 2022 It is rendered just so by a particular butcher, such that Ms. Rodsky’s mother-in-law swears by his schmaltz.New York Times, 26 Nov. 2021 Just as Evan covers trauma with a new trauma, so does this glossily made, blandly designed 137-minute movie cover trauma with schmaltz. Mary Sollosi, EW.com, 24 Sep. 2021 Put on your rom-com goggles and behold the schmaltz from Modern Love’s second season, which most prominently features Kit Harington and Tobias Menzies in different stories across the pond inspired by the New York Times column. Devon Ivie, Vulture, 15 July 2021 See More