Scholars agree that although Yiddish-speaking Jews lived across a wide swath of Europe, there were distinctive regional accents within those areas.

Unofficially, there is a physical division known as the "Gefilte Fish Line" (http://www.jewishsf.com/content/20/module/displaystory/story_id/12012/format/html/displaystory.html for a report on this topic at a genealogy conference.)

The definitive conclusion is that the "Galicianer" accent, which had controlled speech west of the Gefilte Fish line had spread across southwest Poland. The "Litvak" accent was located east of the line, in countries which had been part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania of Imperial Russia during the Czarist era. This would include the modern countries of Latvia, Estonia and Belarus as well.

In terms of accent, it is equally true that the way that a family pronounces the word "kugel" (Yiddish for "pudding") is proof of where their ancestors lived in Middle and Eastern Europe.

"Ki-GELL" is the Galicianer pronunciation, and "KUH-gull" is the Litvak way. Some people say that there is a third phrasing, of "Kee-gill," but no one today seems to know to which region this latter word is linked.

At its simplest, a kugel is a pudding, as already stated, nothing more than ingredients bound with some beaten eggs and then baked. There are kugels of rice, broccoli, corn, or grated carrots. More popular is potato kugel--but most popular of all is "lukshen" (noodle) kugel.

As always with Galicianer cooking, their lukshen kugel relies heavily on sugar. Even families of Litvak descent who are appalled by the rampant sweetness of Galicianer cuisine make an exception when it comes to lukshen kugel. The barely seasoned Litvak lukshen kugel, just noodles, eggs and pepper, cannot hold up to a luscious Galicianer-style pudding, redolent of cinnamon and rich with cheese, almost like a cheesecake in pudding form.

Such a recipe, obviously, cannot be pareve. In keeping with the prohibitions of the Jewish Kosher laws, versions of the recipe mentioned above can be served only at dairy meals and never with meat.

For meat meals, there is a single recipe for a Litvak-style noodle kugel, famously called "Jerusalem kugel" (kugel Yerushalmi) that is both pareve and succulent. Made in Jerusalem for centuries, originating with pioneers who had come from Lithuania, this kugel has a topping which is a dense caramel. Before the Sabbath began, those early settlers put their kugels in communal ovens, where the puddings kept warm over the Sabbath day. To keep these kugels from drying out during their long baking, albeit at low temperatures, true Jerusalem kugels had to be quite dense. It was the long baking that caused the sugar on the top to caramelize.

It's amazing that two simple recipes tell such deliciously important stories about the journey of our people through the Diaspora.

Happy New Year!