Rugelach is a Jewish pastry with various spellings and fillings, originating from Eastern European Jewish culture. It can be made with or without dairy and is popular year-round, particularly around holidays. The pastry can be found in many bakeries and grocery stores and is often brushed with an egg white glaze and coated with nuts or sugar before baking. Rugelach has been around for at least the 18th century and is said to have been created to commemorate the expulsion of the Turks from Austria.
Rugelach is a Jewish pastry originating in the Ashkenazy, or European Jewish, culture. It has many alternate spellings, including rugelakh, rugulach, rugalach, ruggalach, and rogelach in the plural, and rugalah and rugala in the singular. The pastry is sometimes referred to in the United States as a butter horn, nut horn, or cream cheese cookie. Eastern European Jewish immigrants introduced the desert to the United States, where it is now popular even beyond Jewish-American culture.
Rugalach is available in virtually any Jewish bakery and is eaten year-round, particularly around the holidays. It can also be found in many bakeries and grocery stores that don’t specialize in Jewish cuisine. It usually consists of a rolled triangle of dough around a filling. The dough is rolled out into a large circle, covered with the filling, and then cut into triangles like a pizza so that each “slice” can be rolled up. Alternatively, it can be made by rolling a large sheet of dough around a filling and cutting it before baking.
Rugelach is a Yiddish word meaning “little angles,” “little twists,” or perhaps “royal.” The dough can be made with or without dairy products. Under kosher dietary rules, meat and dairy products cannot be eaten together, but dairy-free rugelach is an appropriate dessert after a meat-based meal. Cream cheese is sometimes used in the dough, but sour cream dough is thought to be more traditional. The creamy version of the biscuits is generally considered an American innovation, as traditional Eastern European food does not use cream cheese.
Many different fillings can be found in rugelach, including fruit preserves such as apricot or raspberry, chocolate, cinnamon, nuts, poppy seeds, raisins, or marzipan. You can use almost any sweet filling and even savory filling to put a twist on the original. The pastry is often brushed with an egg white glaze and sometimes coated with nuts or coarse sugar before baking. The dough can also be rolled out on a mixture of cinnamon, sugar and nuts instead of flour to add flavor.
Rugelach has been around for at least the 18th century. According to tradition, the pastry was born to commemorate the expulsion of the Turks from Austria in 1783. The crescent shape of the pastry mirrored the emblem of the Ottoman Empire, so people could symbolically devour their enemy. In many Central and Eastern European languages, rugelach is referred to by the native term for “crescent”, such as the German Kipferin.
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