You Made Taiglach!

By Harvey Silverman

“You made taiglach!” my octogenarian mom exclaimed when I placed the bowl next to her as she sat at the foot – or was it the head – of the dining room table; the same seat in which she had sat for more than forty years hosting dinners with the extended family celebrating; holidays, the new year – Rosh Hashana – and Passover and Channukah, Thanksgiving and birthdays, or visits from distant relatives.

My mom’s delighted joy at my surprise pleased me greatly. Though dinner had not yet begun – taiglach are hardly an appetizer or first course – she picked one up and bit into it. She smiled. “They taste just like my mother’s,” she said.

* * *

Honey is a traditional way many Jews mark the new year. One hopes that the coming year will be sweet, as sweet as honey. While dipping apple slices in honey is perhaps the most common practice, pieces of a dense dough cooked in a honey syrup – taiglach – is to me a much tastier choice.

During my childhood my maternal grandmother, Bubbe Cohen, made taiglach. Cooked to a lovely brown, about the size of a ping pong ball, not round but knotted. Sweet, chewy, sticky, wonderful.

* * *

My mom never made taiglach. I do not know why; her food – both ethnic and not – was rightly savored and legendary. Perhaps her mother did not teach her. With Bubbe Cohen’s demise in the 1960s taiglach disappeared.

* * *

Now and again taiglach might pass, though briefly, as a visual snapshot in my memory’s rolodex. Sitting in a small bowl, perhaps topped with bits of shredded coconut spread in a random distribution, contrasting with the shiny brown. A fleeting and not quite realized recall of the taste.

Sometime in the early 1990’s I came upon a recipe for taiglach; I do not remember where, perhaps a newspaper. With thoughts of honeyed doughballs dancing in my head the instructions were carefully followed. The result was something that looked, sort of, like Bubbe’s but tasted otherwise, and not in a favorable way. I ate a couple, discarded the rest.

* * *

Nearly two decades later, I tried again. A different recipe from a cookbook of Jewish foods. Once more, carefully followed. To me, success! Again, though not instructed in the directions, I knotted the dough just as Bubbe had done – pretty smart, my Bubbe, I thought – knotting exposes greater surface area to the honey syrup than a round or odd piece of dough.

* * *

So there I sat, at the head – or was it the foot – of the table; my dad’s seat that he had occupied for so many years until his own demise, watching my mom eat one taigel after another. Before the dinner, during the dinner, and had there been any left, no doubt after the dinner. It was her last Rosh Hashana; the memory of her happiness far sweeter than the taiglach.

Previously appeared in Meat for Tea; the Valley Review