It tends to fare best when made with a pasta shape that has nooks and folds that can grip onto the cottage cheese, and with a cottage cheese that is smaller in curd. You can make it with bow-ties, macaroni, penne, fettuccini, or whatever you prefer. The type of pasta that is used is up to the cook. In non-kosher cases you’ll find that bacon is often added. The dish’s essential components are obviously noodles and cottage cheese but preparations vary with the addition of fried onions, or sour cream, or butter, or copious amounts of black pepper. That said, recipes are generally scarce and arguably they’re not needed. In Yiddish, the dish is called lokshen mit kaese, and you can track down recipes made with homemade lokshen (noodles). In the United States it can be found being prepared in many Jewish American kitchens, even in the homes of families that have lived here for a few generations. Both my parents grew up in the former Soviet Union, and both remember being fed this dish, albeit with farmers’ cheese (a close cousin of cottage cheese). While the origins of the dish are murky, noodles and cottage cheese is still fairly commonly eaten across Eastern Europe in and out of Jewish kitchens from Poland, to Hungary, to Russia. In fact, in our home we had noodles and cottage cheese, but we never had noodle kugel. There is no evidence that kugel birthed noodles and cottage cheese or vice versa.

The point at which cottage cheese entered the picture remains unclear. Sources cite that noodle kugel originated in Germany about 800 years ago.

At first, I thought noodles and cottage cheese must have started out as deconstructed kugel. The polarity of responses inspired me to do more digging on the subject of this dish’s origins.

I’ve found little neutrality on the subject. Whenever I bring up noodles and cottage cheese in conversation, it always elicits a strong reaction: Either there is an immediate enthusiastic nostalgia associated with it, or instant confusion and/or disgust. I think of it as the Eastern European version of boxed macaroni and cheese – a culinary staple of youth. Noodles and cottage cheese was the defining dish of my childhood.

Thick mac and cheese noodles