Onion Kuchen

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Back in 1996, a “recipe” book was published titled, “In Memory’s Kitchen,” that was an homage to women incarcerated at the Terezin (also known as Theresienstadt) concentration camp in Czechoslavakia during WW II. The recipes, gleaned from aged and brittle hand-written pages, gave instructions for making traditional robust Czech dishes—beloved food from the memory of these starving and tortured women. It appeared around the same time that a professor from the Ambler Campus of Temple University walked into our synagogue at that time, Temple Sinai, and announced that his students were working on Holocaust projects that he thought might be displayed as part of a memorial program for Yom HaShoah that was being planned by the synagogue. It all coalesced in a remarkable program that involved a museum-type display hosted by college students, a poignant auditorium program during which a Holocaust survivor read poetry from the book, specifically “The Professor’s Wife,” in her native Yiddish, and refreshments made from the recipes in the book were served. My part was to write an introduction to the program and make the refreshments based on the recipes in the book. Both recipes that I adapted from the loosely-translated and sketchily-remembered instructions were unqualified successes. 

Right before Rosh Hashanah this year, my freezer filled with ice at the bottom, and, in order for the serviceman to repair it, the freezer had to completely defrost for 24 hours. I sent whatever would fit into her freezer over to Beth. Among the items that did not fit and had to defrost was a box of puff pastry. I remembered how much I loved this kuchen and that it was made with puff pastry, and so I made it this year for the dairy Shabbat we had at Jess and Alex’s after Rosh Hashanah. The original was flavored with a tablespoon of caraway seeds. Since this was impromptu, and I had no caraway, I plucked some bronze fennel from the garden and sauteéd it along with the onions. It was equally delicious and I must remember to make it more often.

Onion Kuchen

• 2 large Spanish onions
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter
• 1 Tbsp. caraway seeds
• 3 large eggs
• 3  Tbsp. sugar
• pinch of salt
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 package frozen puff pastry

Defrost the puff pastry and lay the squares in a single layer on the bottom of a greased 12 x 16-inch (half sheet size foil) baking pan.

Separate eggs and set aside.

Slice onions thinly and begin sauteéing over low heat in melted butter.

Crush the caraway seeds with mortar and pestle, or use a heavy rounded object pressed into a small cup to release their fragrance. Add to onions and continue cooking until onions are translucent.

Stir in salt, sugar and flour, and cook an additional 3 minutes. Cool for several minutes.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Meanwhile, beat 3 egg whites until stiff. Set aside. Use same beaters and beat egg yolks until thick and lemon-colored.

Stir egg yolks and sour cream into cooled onion mixture.

Fold in egg whites.

Spread this mixture on the puff pastry and bake about 30 minutes or until lightly browned on top.

Cut in squares and serve warm.

This freezes well and can be rewarmed, uncovered, at 350°F to serve.



Below is the introduction that I wrote to tie all the elements of the Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) program together:

As members of the Jewish people, we have the longest collective memory of our history of any people in the world. Remembering is a sacred task for us, for what is our sacred Torah if not a holy remembrance of the lives of our ancestors and their relationship with God. This sacred remembrance sustains us in our present-day lives. It provides us with the standard by which we measure morality and eternal truth in our relationship with God and with other human beings. Were we not imbued with this feeling of the sanctity and holy purpose of this book, its meaning would be lost in one generation. It would take its place among all the other ancient literature of this world, and human beings would continue to search for meaning and morality in their lives without any particular guide or direction to help them in their search.


Our religious practices are exquisitely designed from ancient times to help us remember the formative events of our history. By the practices with which we observe our Shabbat, holy days and festivals, we reinforce the memory of the written word. We lend our bodies, and not just our minds, to the practice of the sacred words. We involve all of our five senses in our remembrance and therefore learn with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our might how to live and imbue our lives with meaning and purpose. We connect ourselves to our ancestors and their struggles.


Just as the Exodus from Egypt was a monumental event in our history which goes to the heart of who and what we are as a people, the Holocaust also is destined to become such a monumental event in our history. Remembering the Exodus is a sacred duty and, with the form of our Passover seder, we involve all of our senses in this task. Food is prepared in a very special and different way. We eat it with symbolic references to the lives of our ancestors—their struggles and their triumphs. We inhale the odors, both sweet and bitter, and these physical senses engage us in more than just an intellectual sense with discerning the meaning of those lives. So too, the meaning of the suffering of our people during the Holocaust should be imbued with this sense of holy remembrance and endowed with all the physical keys to our senses for perpetuating our remembrance of these events throughout eternity.


The book, In Memory’s Kitchen, is a collection of recipes as remembered by the starving women incarcerated at the concentration camp of Thereisenstadt. Those who wrote about the book question the motivation of the inmates. Wouldn’t the exercise of remembering all the wonderful foods the inmates had enjoyed heighten their sense of pain as they starved amidst the death and destruction? The general consensus of these reviewers was that the cookbook represents an undying spirituality and hope for the future. The act of remembering life and the nourishment of food as it had been before the destruction, and as they hoped it would be after weathering the storm, was an act of sanctification.


Just as the Passover seder seeks to inspire the participant to feel as if he or she had been personally involved in the liberation from slavery by involving all the senses in the experience of remembering, we hope to involve all your senses in experiencing, in some small measure, the lives of those who experienced the trauma of the concentration camp at Terezin as well as elsewhere.