The History of Potato Kugel

[elleng]

Everything you need to know about this Ashkenazi classic.

Sunday potatoes. Monday potatoes. Tuesday and Wednesday potatoes. Thursday and Friday potatoes. But shabbos, for a change… potato kugel!” – Yiddish folk song

The Ashkenazi kitchen includes many beloved foods. Kugel may be the most popular of all. Defined as a “pudding” (in the British savory side dish sense, not the American sweet dessert), a true kugel must include a starch, eggs, and some type of fat, with no water added. Today, kugels are typically baked in a casserole dish.

Over its centuries of history, kugel has developed into many varieties, though two types are most common today: potato and noodle. Each have many variations, which isn’t surprising for the centuries-old noodle kugel. Potato, however, is a fairly recent addition within the kugel collective.

As the folk song above suggests, potatoes formed such a massive part of the Eastern European diet that it’s hard to imagine Ashkenazi cuisine without them. However, potatoes were barely consumed in the region until the mid-1800s. (And yes, within the overall history of kugel, 200 years is considered recent.)

Rapidly adopted, the highly nutritious and inexpensive potato almost singlehandedly fueled the 19th-century Ashkenazi population boom. Some people ate potatoes for three meals a day, with most Polish Jews consuming around 400 pounds of them each winter. Underscoring their significance, there are around a dozen Yiddish words for potato, including kartofl, bulbe, and erdepl (“earth apple,” a common descriptor in numerous languages).

A good cook would thus incorporate potatoes into existing dishes, but also found ways to create a little variety within an otherwise monotonous diet. Hence, potato became the newest type of kugel, and soon branched into different versions.'>

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/the-nosher/the-history-of-potato-kugel/?

[sprinkleeninow]

1. My maternal grandfather called potatoes "kartoffel".

[TreasonousBastard]

2. I remember kartoffel klopse, or potato dumpling. Yum! Potatoes, btw, are native to the Andes...

and Spanish explorers found out about them in the 1600s. Didn't get too much play in Spain, but Irish and Polish latched on to them. Ashkenazi Jews got them from Poles and Germans and whoever else ate them. However they got around, though, they are greatly appreciated the world over.

[MyMission]

3. Fascinating

My family wasn't big on potato kugle and didn't serve it, at least by the time I came around. My older cousins remember not liking it, so it was served at some point. I remember we served roasted potatoes often.

We all enjoyed lukshen kugle, made from noodles, with cheese, raisins, egg to bind it. A sweet side dish, not always so sweet, I remember looking forward to holidays when someone or several would make a kugle, because I liked dairy meals better.

We kept kosher, and having dairy or non-meat meals meant butter on bread and corn instead of margarine, drinking milk, and a better dessert, baked goods, ice cream, cheesecake, pudding.
We often had fruit, fresh or canned, for dessert when we had meat.

Thanks for sharing this article. Things you post often spur happy memories, especially the food ones. I will have more appreciation for potato kugle the next time I'm offered some at a pot luck synagogue event.

[elleng]

4. Ditto lukshen kugle!