Skip to main content
Dessert

Blueberry Torte

A blueberry torte with a buttery crust and fruit filling, topped with a sour cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Blueberry Torte

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the crust

  1. Cream the butter and 2 tablespoons of sugar together.

  2. Stir in the egg.

  3. Add ½ pound of flour.

  4. Line the inside of a springform pan with this mixture.

Fill and first bake

  1. Mix the blueberries with ½ cup sugar and 2 tablespoons flour.

  2. Fill the crust with the blueberry mixture.

  3. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 30 minutes or until about halfway done.

Add topping and finish

  1. Make a sauce by mixing the beaten yolk of 1 egg with ½ cup sugar and the sour cream.

  2. Pour the sauce over the fruit.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg white.

  4. Bake for another 30 minutes or until done.

  5. Let cool in the pan.

  6. Carefully remove the rim of the springform pan.

  7. Let the torte stand on a tin.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a tender, crumbly structure to the crust.
Flour
Provides structure to the crust and thickens the blueberry filling.
Blueberries
Supply the main fruit flavour and moisture that soaks into the filling.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, and helps the topping set creamy when baked.
Eggs
Bind the crust and set the sauce into a custard-like layer.
Sugar
Sweetens the crust, filling and sauce, and helps the crust brown.

The step that matters

Second bake after adding the sauce. The egg and sour cream sauce sets as the proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves it runny and overbaking makes it dry and grainy, so check that it is done before cooling.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes