Are Pretzels and Olives Considered Tafel to the Beer?

Hi Rabbi, I was out with friends and we were enjoying a cold beer. They served olives and peanuts with some pretzels along with it. Wouldn’t those be considered tafel to the beer, and therefore I wouldn’t need to make an additional bracha on the olives and nuts?

Thank you for your question.

The Halacha:

One must recite a separate bracha for each of the foods, and there is a specific order: first Mezonot on the pretzels, then Ha’etz on the olives, followed by Ha’adamah on the peanuts, and finally Shehakol on the beer. (Please see below why, in this case, we do not consider the food served with the beer to be tafel .)

The Halacha explained:

This is a very complex subject in the laws of berachot , known as the halachot of ikkar and tafel .
It is brought in the Mishnah Berurah that any food eaten together with another food that was added to enhance the taste of the main dish requires only one bracha on the main food, and this will exempt the secondary food that was added. The main food is called ikkar , and the food added to enhance the taste is called tafel . In such a case, we say " ha'ikkar poter et ha'tafel "—the main food exempts the secondary one.
(However, if the secondary food is one of the five grains (wheat, barley, spelt, oats, and rye), then the halacha is that if it was added to enhance the taste of the dish, one should then recite Mezonot on the dish, since the mezonot would be considered the ikkar).

So, for example, if one has Chinese rice with corn and pieces of carrots mixed into it, the beracha would be only Mezonot , since the main dish is the rice, and the corn and carrots were added for taste.

What happens if the ikkar and tafel are not mixed together?

The halacha states that when someone eats a dish and only eats the secondary food because it goes well with the main food, he does not need to recite a separate bracha on the secondary food, since it is being eaten solely because of the main food.

For example, here in Eretz Yisrael, when someone makes a Kiddush in shul on Shabbos morning, they generally serve Yerushalmi kugel (a type of pasta dish) along with a slice of pickled cucumber. If the person is only eating the pickled cucumber because it goes well with the kugel, then he does not need to recite a bracha on the pickles, since they are exempt with the Mezonot blessing on the kugel, as we explained: ha’ikkar poter et ha’tafel .

However, there is one condition for this: one must eat the pickles together with the kugel. So even though they are served separately on the plate, one must eat them together, and only then would they be exempt by the bracha of Mezonot that was recited on the kugel.

There is actually an interesting question: what happens if I finish the kugel and have a piece of pickle left, do I now need to recite a bracha on the last piece of pickle?
The halacha is that since most of the food was eaten together, therefore, what is left is still considered tafel , and one does not need to recite a separate bracha on it. The same applies if, at some point while eating, one eats a piece of pickel by itself, he still does not need to recite another bracha.

Circling back to your question, since one does not eat pretzels and olives together with the beer, it could not be considered a case of ikkar and tafel , and therefore, as we said, one must recite a separate bracha for each food.

However, if the drink is so strong that one needs to eat something afterward to remove the sharpness, it is brought in the Shulchan Aruch that one does not need to recite a bracha on the food eaten for that purpose.
That said, I don’t think that would apply in the case of drinking beer.

Wishing you well.

Shulcha Aruch OC Siman 112