You can study food in a class or from a book. But it's quite another thing to study kosher cuisine in the land of your grandparents or great-grandparents.

Twenty-eight high school students from the Samuel Scheck Hillel Community Day School in Miami traveled to Vienna, Prague, and Budapest for 11 days last spring to mingle with Jewish teens. As they reconnected with their cultural roots, they also enjoyed tasting their culinary heritage.

The 10th-graders ate cold cherry soup and hearty cholent in the Budapest kosher restaurant Hannah. They enjoyed the terrific spread of grilled eggplant and zucchini and beef goulash in Vienna and mashed lentils in Prague.

Jesse Glueck particularly remembers breaded fish and vegetables in Prague and "cakes -- good cakes -- and pastries with chocolate and butter frosting."

Eating his way through Europe wasn't bad for this 16-year-old from North Miami Beach. Especially when a pasta dish with meat reminded him of his European grandmother's cooking.

Glueck was so enamored of the cholent stuffed with meat, beans and spices, that he asked his mother to replicate it. "It was just really good, but I don't know how they made it," he says.

He also was touched by a visit to the Viennese synagogue where his great-grandparents were married, one of the few Jewish structures to survive the Holocaust. Becoming fast friends with his counterparts at the Vienna Jewish school Zwi Perese Chajes Schule was also a highlight.

"We learned about the people's roots who are from the city and to connect with the students," he says.

Danielle Traub, 15, of Hollywood, Fla., also reveled in the food she ate on this trip. "I'm a tiny person who eats a lot," she says. Even though the dishes were new to her, she found the food familiar.

"The old Yiddish food, the kugels, are made differently in every country. But it's all the same idea. It's interpreted in so many different ways. And that's the same way Judaism works," she says. "We are all Jews and at the same time we all observe Judaism differently, whether through traditions or levels of observance."

This student exchange program is through the Central Europe Center for Research and Documentation, or Centropa (www.centropa.org), a nonprofit corporation with its headquarters in Vienna. The project for students from North America, Israel, and Europe is sponsored in part by Steven Spielberg's Righteous Persons Foundation.

Centropa is also known for Centropa Quarterly, an online magazine of fiction, reportage, book reviews, and a kosher cooking section. Retired New York Times food writer Mimi Sheraton writes a column, and the Eating Around Eastern Europe section explores the recipes from this part of the world (www.centropa.org/cooking.asp?viewstateINTRO).