by Gil Marks
Kugel
Kugel is a baked or steamed pudding, either sweet or savory.
Origin: Germany
Other names: kugl.
"Kugel, this holy national dish, has done more for the preservation of Judaism than all three issues of your magazine." (From an 1825 letter to the editor of a new German Jewish periodical by German poet and writer Heinrich Heine.)
Kugel (kuglen plural) is part of a general category of Ashkenazic grain-based foods called mehlspeisen (meals of flour) and belongs to the more specific category of teigachz (pudding). From its birthplace eight centuries ago in southern Germany, Ashkenazim brought the kugel with them eastward and the dish gradually evolved and expanded from its humble origins. Whatever its form and content, the common denominators of all true kugels are a starch base, eggs, and fat, without the addition of water or other liquids. If the dish lacks any of the basic ingredients, it is technically a casserole, quiche, or cake rather than a kugel. Most kugels contain only a few ingredients. Whether spelled kugel (by Poles and Lithuanians), koogle (by Germans), or keegal (by Galitzianers in southern Poland), this dish certainly ranks high in the pantheon of Jewish foods.
By the twelfth century, dumplings had arrived in Germany, around the same time as the Sabbath stew. Inspired Franco-German cooks began dropping a savory bread batter containing a little egg as a binder into the center of the Sabbath stew, and this dumpling developed a rich flavor and texture as the stew slowly simmered overnight. The following day after morning services, the dumpling was served warm alongside the stew for Sabbath lunch. Emulating an emerging German practice of steaming puddings in a clay pot in place of intestines and other organs, medieval Jewish housewives began cooking the dumpling in a kugeltopf—kugel was the Middle High German for "ball" and topf meant "jar/pot"—a commonplace small rounded earthenware jar. The kugeltopf was placed in the top of the stew and the steamy environment kept the batter moist and prevented burning. This not only transformed the batter into a pudding, but also gave rise to a new name. To differentiate the pudding still in the stew from the stew, people began calling the pudding variously weckschalet (weck was German for "bread roll"), semmelkugel (also "bread roll"), and schaletkugel. In Bavaria and parts of southern Germany, kugel came to denote savory puddings and schalet referred to sweet ones. In eastern Europe, kugel became the generic term for all these puddings. When cooked in a stew without the kugeltopf, the dumpling whimsically became known as a Shabbos ganif (Sabbath thief), as it absorbed flavors from the liquid as it cooked.
As the kugel came out of the cholent (Sabbath stew), the rather plain, rudimentary bread dumplings gradually evolved. Onions, ubiquitous in Ashkenazic cookery, were sautéed and added for extra flavor. Gribenes, cracklings made while rendering schmaltz, provided another possible flavor element. Cooks who could afford spices, which were very expensive until recently, mixed in some pepper or other spices. (Salt- and-pepper kugels are still popular among some segments of the community.)
Kugel achieved new gastronomic heights when housewives substituted farfel and noodles and, on Passover, matza for the bread batter. It is uncertain whether eastern Europeans learned of noodles from the Tatars (Mongolian tribes), Byzantines, or Italians. Whatever the case, by the fifteenth century, lokshen (noodles) had become a mainstay of northern Europe and within a century were popular in kugels.
By the sixteenth century, rice kugels, once rare and typically reserved for special occasions, emerged in eastern Europe, influenced by the Ottoman advances into Europe and the introduction of numerous Middle Eastern foods. The Turks also introduced cornmeal to Europe, which Romanians used in kugels such as malai. Potatoes, after their popularization in the mid-nineteenth century, provided cooks with an inexpensive and filling ingredient, and potato kugel subsequently became the predominant version in the impoverished shtetls of eastern Europe. This widespread use of potatoes is reflected in lines from a popular Yiddish folk song: "Sunday potatoes, Monday potatoes, Tuesday and Wednesday potatoes, Thursday and Friday potatoes, but Shabbos, for a change, a potato kugel."
Kugel continued to evolve. Among the beliefs of Renaissance Europe was the notion that "warm" foods should be consumed during the winter to combat the cold—"warm" encompassed not only temperature, but also foods that prickle the tongue, most notably certain spices (e.g., cinnamon and nutmeg) and dried fruit. The most common dried fruits in late medieval Europe were raisins and currants. Of course, only the wealthy could afford most of the ingredients of pudding, so the masses only enjoyed it for a holiday, if then. In the medieval period, Germans began flavoring some of their steamed bread puddings variously with honey, cinnamon, rose water, ground nuts, and raisins, and Jews followed suit in kugels.
By the nineteenth century, with the increasing affordability of sugar, sweetened bread, noodle, and rice kugels became increasingly common, particularly among Galitzianers. These kugels, frequently containing raisins and sometimes seasoned with cinnamon, were served as both a side dish and a dessert. In general, Lithuanians and Hungarians retained a preference for savory kugels, although they did also develop a liking for sweet noodle kugel. The sweet versions were served alongside savory dishes, such as cholent, a pairing that endures. For dairy meals, pot cheese and milk or sour cream were added to noodles, producing a custard-like consistency. Mixing in some inexpensive carrots with a sweetened batter yielded the carrot kugel. Hungarians took the dessert concept even further, layering the sweetened noodles with various fillings, including poppy seeds, jam, and apples.
Beginning in the late 1700s, groups of Chasidim as well as adherents of the Vilna Gaon (Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon of Vilna, Lithuania) began moving to Israel in order to live a more fully religious life. They brought with them the traditions of eastern Europe, including their clothing and foods. In the nineteenth century, descendants of those early Ashkenazic arrivals living in Jerusalem developed a distinctive noodle kugel called kugel yerushalmi. This hybrid of traditional salt-and-pepper noodle kugel and sweet noodle kugel featured a tantalizing contrast of ground black pepper and caramelized sugar. Subsequently and until today, some families in the neighborhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem earned their livelihoods making it for food stores. Kugel yerushalmi remains extremely popular in Israel.
During the Middle Ages, few families in Europe other than the nobility owned a home oven. Thus, for most of history, cooking was usually performed directly over a fire (roasting, braising, boiling, steaming, and poaching); accordingly, puddings and kugels were commonly steamed. Baked foods had to be lugged to the town bakery or to the occasional private home oven, and cooks typically had to pay a fee to use these facilities. In addition, temperatures were difficult to regulate in those wood-burning medieval brick or clay ovens, so baked goods had to be carefully watched during the entire baking time. Consequently, except for bread and an occasional cake, baked dishes were rare.
The first Jewish cookbook in English, The Jewish Manual (London, 1846), by Judith Montefiore, contained the first record of the word kugel in English and offered a recipe for "Kugel and Commean" (commean refers to hamin, "Sabbath stew"). The dish consisted of a sweetened and spiced bread mixture that was placed in a covered "quart basin" and steamed in a meat and bean stew. Similarly, the first American Jewish cookbook, Jewish Cookery (Philadephia, 1871), included a recipe for "Coogle, Or Pudding, and Peas and Beans," consisting of a sweetened noodle mixture steamed in a covered basin that was set in a meat and bean stew resembling a soupy cholent.
When the word kugel first appeared in Webster's Dictionary in the early twentieth century, it was originally defined as "a suet pudding," a characterization derived from certain similarities between some German kugels and British steamed puddings. By the time the book's name became Merriam-Webster Dictionary in 1983, it had updated the definition to "a baked pudding."
With the popularization of the home oven in the mid-nineteenth century, kugels suddenly shifted from being steamed in the stew pot to being baked in a separate vessel outside th
e pot. The kugel as we now know it—a baked pudding—had finally arrived. Baking the kugel in an oven had another consequence; the kugel was transformed from being primarily a Sabbath lunch dish and accompaniment for the cholent to a dish that could be served as a side dish for Friday night dinner and even during the weekday. German Jewish cookbooks throughout most of the nineteenth century called for cooking cholents and kugels (inside the stew) for sixteen to twenty-four hours, but by the end of the century, the cooking time had suddenly shrunk to a few hours or much less.
Around the same time that the home oven spread through America, the kugel traveled westward across the Atlantic. Aunt Babette's (Cincinnati, 1889) provided a handful of kugel recipes, all baked. These included "Fleisch Kugel (Meat Balls)," basically a meatloaf; a "Noodle Pudding" consisting of cooked egg noodles layered with sugar, pounded almonds, lemon zest, raisins, and goose fat, noting "Bake two hours... You ought to have a kugeltopf for this noodelockschen"; "Kraut Kugel" entailing chopped cabbage braised in fat, mixed with soaked bread, sugar, raisins, chopped citron, almonds, cinnamon, allspice, lemon juice and zest, and eggs, then baked; and a sugarless "Matzo Kugel" as well as a sweetened "Matzo Pudding, or Schalet."
Well until the mid-twentieth century, bread, matza, and noodles remained the base for most German kugels. In the original edition of The Settlement Cook Book (Milwaukee, 1901), the recipe entitled "Kugel" directed cooks to "soak five wheat rolls in water, then press the bread quite dry." The author also included recipes for a sweetened "Rice Kugel," as well as a savory "Noodle Kugel." Potato kugel became popular in the early twentieth century with the arrival of eastern Europeans. Subsequently, Americans began to tinker with kugels, including adding canned pineapple, fruit cocktail, or maraschino cherries, or crumbling corn flakes over the top. In the second half of the twentieth century, innovative cooks transformed the kugel further with new and sometimes healthier (and yes, even low-fat) kinds of ingredients, most unheard of in eastern Europe, including broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, zucchini, and tofu. Traditional kugels, as well as innovative new forms, remain popular Ashkenazic dishes.
The LeeVees, two Jewish boys and indie-rock stalwarts (Adam Gardner and Dave Schneider), wrote a 2005 ode to the iconic Ashkenazic dish, bemoaning, "But kugel/You're not like you used to be/You were once sweet and creamy/Now you're low fat." The venerable dish serves as a metaphor for societal and cultural influences on Jewish tradition, as the song continues, "So don't try to tell me things haven't changed/The way you're made these days you should have another name/I just wished things stayed the same."
Tasty, inexpensive, filling, versatile, kugels proved ideal for the Sabbath, festivals, and life-cycle events, serving as a side dish or, among the very poor, the main course. In most homes, no Sabbath meal or life-cycle event would be considered complete without at least one type of kugel, usually pareve for meat meals. Noodle kugels with cheese are widespread at dairy occasions, such as Hanukkah, Shavuot, and the meal following Yom Kippur. In many synagogues, kugel is common at the Sabbath kiddush. Sweetened noodle or rice kugels with apples are popular on Rosh Hashanah, contributing a sweet note to the new year. There is a custom in some Polish households of serving four specific kugels—epl (apple), mehl (flour), lokshen (noodle), and kartoffel (potato)—on Parshat Zachor (portion of remembrance), the Sabbath before Purim, as their initials spell Amalek, the ancient enemy of the Israelites and ancestor of Haman. Matza and potato kugels are mainstays during Passover. Leftover kugel is all too commonly snuck out of the refrigerator as a late night snack.
(See also Cholent/Schalet, Dumpling, Fluden, Pastida, Schalet, and Tish)
Ashkenazic Sweet Noodle Pudding (Zeesih Lokshen Kugel)
9 to 12 servings
[DAIRY or PAREVE]
1 pound medium or fine egg noodles
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter or margarine
5 large eggs, lightly beaten
2/3 to 1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon or 1 tablespoon orange marmalade
About 1 teaspoon table salt or 2 teaspoons kosher salt
¾ to 1 cup raisins, chopped dried apricots, dried cherries, or chopped mixed dried fruit (optional)
About ¾ cup chopped almonds, hazelnuts, or walnuts (optional)
Additional ground cinnamon for sprinkling
1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 13-by-9-inch baking pan.
2. In a large pot, bring lightly salted water to a rapid boil. Add the noodles and stir to prevent sticking. Cook, stirring occasionally, until al dente (tender but still firm), 7 to 10 minutes for medium noodles, or 3 to 5 minutes for fine noodles. Drain. Add the butter and toss to melt.
3. In a large bowl, beat together the eggs, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, and salt. Stir in the noodles and, if using, raisins and/or nuts. Pour into the prepared pan, leveling the top. Sprinkle with the cinnamon.
4. Bake until golden brown, about 1 hour. Serve warm or at room temperature. Kugel freezes well.
Variation
Sweet Noodle-Cheese Kugel (Zeesih Lokshen Un Kaese Kugel):
Increase the eggs to 8. Add 1 pound (2 cups) farmer cheese or small-curd cottage cheese, and 1 pound (2 cups) sour cream, gevina levana (Israeli white cheese), or softened cream cheese.
Kugelhopf
Kugelhopf is a rich yeast cake baked in a tall fluted pan with a center hole.
Origin: Austria or Alsace, France
Other names: Austria and southern Germany: gugelhopf, gugelhupf; Czech Republic and Slovakia: bábovka; Hungary: kuglóf; Poland: babka.
During the Renaissance, Italian chefs, influenced by Arabic baked goods like the Iberian bola, began creating lighter cakes, basically sweetened yeast breads, called torta (Latin for "a round bread"). The dough of these breads could only be mildly sweet, as too much honey or sugar hampers or kills yeast. Additional sweetening could be achieved by adding dried fruits. On the other hand, yeast breads can handle plenty of fat and, accordingly, bakers sometimes did not skimp when it came to adding butter. During the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the Italian torta spread throughout Europe, taking on various forms, including the Italian panettone (baked in an earthenware flowerpot), French brioche, and Slavic babka (Jewish babka is somewhat different and pareve). The version of this light cake in the Teutonic region from Alsace through Austria, claimed by both Vienna and Alsace as the cake's place of origin, is known as kugelhopf. Since cake and pastry baking in Austria became an overwhelmingly Jewish profession, kugelhopf and other baked goods, many created by Jews, became part of the Jewish repertoire.
Because the buttery dough was looser than bread dough, it could not be baked in the usual manner, directly on the floor of the large wood-burning ovens. Consequently, the dough was placed in small earthenware pots, such as the Teutonic kugeltopf (kugel was the Middle High German for "ball" and topf meant "jar/pot"); this round container produced a ball-shaped cake and gave the cake its name. However, because kugelhopf are so dense and the sugar in the dough quickens browning, the center typically remained underdone. Eventually, this problem was resolved with the shift to baking the dough in a rudimentary tube pan known as a Turk's Cap or Turk's Head, a large, glazed, bowl-shaped terra-cotta mold with a central tube, similar to a Bundt pan. Potters added a scalloped surface to the pan, exposing more of the batter to the heat and giving a cake or bread baked in it the appearance of a wound turban. In the mid-nineteenth century, craftsmen began producing a metal version of the Turk's Cap, the first tube pan. Central European home bakers typically owned at least one and frequently a variety of metal and ceramic kugelhopf pans
Jews from Alsace to Vienna, who did not have the rich eastern European egg challah, adopted the kugelhopf as their favorite cake. Alsatians typically use less sweetening, while Austrians tend to make kugelhopf more cakelike by adding more sugar. In southern Germany, it was a popular coffee cake. In the nineteenth century, German immigrants brought kugelhopf to America and German Jews referred to v
arious rich yeast cakes with a variation of the name. The first Jewish cookbook in America, Jewish Cookery (Philadelphia, 1871) by Esther Levy, offered a recipe for "German Kouglauff," the first record of the term in America. The cake consisted of a loose, high-butter, low-sugar yeast batter that was poured into "a mould" and baked; the recipe and name were adapted from The Modern Cook (London, 1845), a popular book by Charles Elmé Francatelli. Aunt Babette's (Cincinnati, 1889) included a recipe for "Abgeruerter Gugelhopf," a high-sugar, high-butter yeast cake with raisins and citron baked in a "cake form." The first edition of The Settlement Cook Book (Milwaukee, 1901) provided a recipe for "Kuchen Roll or Kugelhopf," akin to the Jewish version of babka, calling for a basic kuchen dough to be rolled out, brushed with melted butter, sprinkled with raisins and cinnamon-sugar, rolled up, and baked in either a "long pan or round form with tube in center." In the 1965 edition, the same recipe was entitled "Kuchen Roll or Gugelhopf."
German Jews adopted various yeast cakes for the Sabbath and other special occasions, notably apple schalet and various kuchen. But among Alsatians, kugelhopf became the predominant cake. Many Alsatian households could not imagine a Sabbath without this dessert, which was also traditional on Hanukkah and Purim. Before an Alsatian wedding, guests were offered slices of kugelhopf with coffee and wine. In Alsace, leftover kugelhopf, more of a bread than cake, is commonly served as a breakfast loaf; it is frequently sliced and accompanied with apricot jam and orange marmalade. Stale or even fresh kugelhopf is sometimes moistened with kirsch or rum syrup.
(See also Babka and Kuchen)
Alsatian Yeast Cake (Kugelhopf)
10 to 16 servings
[DAIRY]
½ cup golden raisins
½ cup dark raisins
¼ cup kirsch or light rum
2 packages (4½ teaspoons) active dry yeast or 1 (1-ounce) cake fresh yeast
