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Dessert

Berlin Bun Pudding

A sweet baked pudding made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, milk, and jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Berlin Bun Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the butter, sugar, and eggs until well combined.

  2. Add the flour and mix until smooth.

  3. Dissolve the cream of tartar and baking soda in a little milk, then add to the mixture.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a pie dish and pour in half of the batter.

  2. Spread a layer of jam over the batter.

  3. Top with the remaining batter and smooth the surface.

  4. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 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).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the body of the batter, giving the pudding its structure as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acidic powder that reacts with baking soda to help the batter rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Adding the cream of tartar and baking soda. Baking soda and cream of tartar must react while the batter is in the oven to lift it. Dissolving them in milk and folding them in promptly keeps the gas bubbles from escaping before baking.

“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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