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The Southern Cone · Volume 26, Coast, Valley and the Mapuche and German South

Kuchen

German-Chilean south (Valdivia, Osorno, Lake Llanquihue)

Kuchen, a German-Chilean fruit tart with a low pastry base and cream: a round tart with a low, pale golden pastry rim, the surface covered in dark purple murtilla berries and a few raspberries set into a pale creamy custard.

Illustration

Time
2 hours 20

A low-pastry tart with cream and fruit, the German-Chilean layer's clearest and best-documented dish. What changed in the transplanting from Germany was the fruit, not the pastry: settlers adapted their tart-baking to local forest fruit, murtilla, raspberry, apple and others, rather than the fruit used in Germany itself, and Chilean sources are explicit that this variety, not any single recipe, is what makes Chilean kuchen distinct, "it is hard to find two identical kuchens, even within the same town."

As tradition built it

Serves 8 to 10. Baked about 20 minutes, then 1½ to 2 hours, at 150°C.

Ingredients

The base

  • 140g butter, soft
  • 140g plain flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 100g sugar
  • 2 eggs

The filling

  • 1 piece cinnamon stick
  • 720ml milk
  • 250g plain flour
  • 150g sugar
  • 2 eggs, separated
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 360ml cream
  • 720ml raspberries, fresh or frozen, or fresh strawberries

Method

The base

  1. Heat the oven to 150°C and butter a 25cm springform tin.
  2. Sift the flour with the baking powder. Beat the butter and sugar until foamy, add the eggs one at a time, and fold in the flour. Spread it in the tin and bake about 20 minutes, until it comes away from the sides. Let it cool.

The filling

  1. Heat half the milk with the cinnamon over a medium heat. Mix the flour and sugar and whisk in the rest of the milk, cold, until smooth.
  2. Whisk it into the hot milk and keep stirring until it is smooth and very thick and comes away from the pan. Take out the cinnamon and let it cool, stirring now and then. Beat in the yolks with the vanilla.
  3. Whisk the whites to stiff peaks and whip the cream until thick. Fold half the cream into the paste, then the whites, then the rest of the cream.

Baking

  1. Pour a cupful of filling over the base, scatter the fruit, cover it with the rest of the filling, and level it.
  2. Bake 1½ to 2 hours, until the top is golden and firm. Let it cool before unmoulding.

Notes

No specific historical recipe with precise quantities and timings was found, only generic modern versions.

The recipe is the Academia Gastronómica de Chile's kuchen sureño de frambuesas o frutillas, from INACAP. CNN Chile's apple and murta kuchen lays breadcrumbs, grated apple and murta on a short base and sets them under a yolk and cream royal at 180°C.

What a modern chef changes

Dehydrated fruit and a sous vide compote for a two-texture filling

Method

  1. Concentrate the fruit in a dehydrator before folding it through the filling, for a version with real murtilla or raspberry intensity rather than the wateriness fresh forest fruit can bring to a custard base.
  2. Cook a portion of the fruit down sous vide, at a controlled low temperature with a little sugar, into a compote layered beneath the raw or dehydrated fruit for a genuine two-texture filling.
  3. Finish the whole tart briefly in a Big Green Egg run hot, for a faint smoke note across the crust that a domestic oven cannot give, an honest nod to the wood-fired baking the original German settlers would actually have used.
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