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Berlin Pudding

A steamed almond and egg pudding made with flour, butter, sugar, milk, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Berlin Pudding

Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Berlin Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch, peel, and finely shred the almonds, then dry them in a cool oven.

  2. Sift the flour, add half the milk, and stir vigorously until smooth.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, bring the remaining milk and butter to a boil.

  2. Add the sugar, batter, and salt, stirring until thickened.

  3. Let it cool slightly, then beat in each egg yolk separately.

  4. Stir in the almonds and fold in the whipped egg whites.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into 1 large or 8 small well-buttered molds.

  2. Steam the pudding for 1 to 2 hours.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites, whipped and folded in, lighten the pudding's texture.
Flour
Starch thickens the milk mixture and gives the pudding its body once set.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender crumb.
Almonds
Add nutty flavour and a fine, slightly rich texture to the pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a custard.

The step that matters

Stirring the batter into the milk. Stirring vigorously while adding the flour mixture keeps it smooth; lumps form if the starch is not fully dispersed before thickening, and they are hard to remove later.

“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.

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