kuchen is the German word for cake in general; within that term are many other designations for particular types of cakes. The menus of the German café-pastry shops known as Konditoreien traditionally offer small booklet menus listing Kuchen in subdivisions, depending on ingredients such as cheese, fruit, and cream. See café. Some cakes, simply because they are round and especially if they were prepared without any flour or artificial leavening, are classified as Torten. See torte. In Bialystok, Poland, Bialystoker kuchen was the name for the poppy seed and onion bread roll we call a bialy, probably the result of that city’s long commercial and political interaction with Germany, which added words to the local vocabulary.
