The addition of cottage cheese and milk created a custard-like consistency common in today's dessert dishes.

In Poland, Jewish homemakers added raisins, cinnamon and sweet curd cheese to noodle kugel recipes.

[7][8] Savory kugel may be based on potatoes, matzah, cabbage, carrots, zucchini, spinach, or cheese.

[citation needed] Among South African Jews, the word kugel was used by the elder generation as a term for a young Jewish woman who forsook traditional Jewish dress values for those of the ostentatiously wealthy and became overly materialistic and overgroomed, mirroring how the kugel is a plain pudding garnished as a delicacy.

The women thus described made light of the term, and it has since become an amusing rather than derogatory slang in South African English for a materialistic young woman.