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Dessert

Berlin Pudding

A sweet custard-like pudding made with flour, milk, sugar, butter, eggs, lemon peel, and served with cherry or plum sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Berlin Pudding

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix flour into milk with sugar and butter; simmer until it begins to thicken.

  2. Beat 5 oz of butter into a cream; add salt and pounded lemon peel.

Whip and combine

  1. Separate the eggs; beat yolks and whites until solid froth forms.

  2. Mix all ingredients with the thickened milk just before transferring to a basin.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil or bake the pudding; baking is preferred.

  2. Serve with cherry or plum sauce.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Flour
Thickens the milk and gives the pudding its body and structure as it sets.
Eggs
Set the pudding when cooked, and the whipped whites add air that lightens the texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth custard-like mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a softer, more tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the butter and eggs.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten eggs. The air trapped in the beaten egg foam helps the pudding rise and lighten. Stirring too hard or letting the mixture stand collapses that foam, so combine the eggs gently and just before transferring to the basin.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, sugar, butter, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, sugar, butter, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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