On hot summer mornings in Philadelphia, Eileen Dwell’s mother Marion Spector Getzik would start cooking sweet, creamy rice kugel and ruby-hued borscht so there was time for the house to cool down. When Eileen’s dad Louis returned home from his work as a carpenter, the family would sit down to the meal, with her dad alternating bites between the two dishes.
Born in 1916, Marion was the daughter of immigrants from a place Eileen knows as Chodochover (likely present-day Khodoriv, Ukraine), and was known for her kugels including a salt and pepper noodle kugel, a spinach one, and lokshen or noodle kugel. On both sides of the family, there were “cousins’ clubs,” where siblings and cousins got together every month at someone’s home for games like knock rummy and pinochle and whenever Eileen’s parents hosted, there was kugel.
Marion’s mother Gitty made the same rice kugel and as Eileen started asking around about the dish, she learned that her father, whose family was from the same region in Eastern Europe, makes a similar rice kugel. While it’s less common than noodle kugel today, the late culinary scholar Gil Marks explains in the “Encyclopedia of Jewish Food” that: “By the sixteenth century, rice kugels, once rare and typically reserved for special occasions, emerged in Eastern Europe, influenced by the Ottoman advances into into Europe and the introduction of numerous Middle Eastern foods.” A recipe for the dish also appears in “The Settlement Cookbook,” an iconic early Jewish American cookbook.
Never a great lover of rice, Eileen had almost forgotten about the kugel until she attended a recent Jewish Food Society event in Philadelphia, which she says jogged her memory. She found her mother’s handwritten recipe on a 3x5 card, but some steps were missing. Determined to recreate it, Eileen made three different versions and worked with us to get the recipe back to the original. Instead of serving it alongside borscht, she says “It’s really nice with bagels and lox.”
Cook’s note: This sweet, custardy rice kugel has plump grains of rice, chewy golden raisins sprinkled throughout, and a dusting of cinnamon on top. Serve it with a dollop of sour cream.
