Coming to terms: Kuchen, Torte, and pie (2024)

We started baking on Saturday afternoon. I asked S if he had a good recipe for Biskuitteig(no, not biscuit dough--sponge cake). He responded, "What are you making? Kuchenboden oder Tortenboden?"

Kuchenboden is cake base (literally, cake floor); Tortenboden is torte floor. Kuchenboden is often a layer of Murbeteig--shortbread dough--topped with a layer of Biskuitteig--sponge cake batter. InObstkuchen, that Kuchenbodenis topped with delectable fruit, often with pectin or gelatin or melted jam on top of the whole shebang to make it shiny.

Here are two photos of non-shinyObstkuchen I made last summer in Steinebach. There's a layer of vanilla pudding between the cakes and the fruit, and maybe a thin layer of jam too, but I can't remember. There is not any Murbeteigunder either Biskuit, but they're both clearly stillObstkuchen.

Thus our definition of Kuchenbegins with Fructhkuchen. You use Kuchenboden forObstkuchen.

Tortenboden, in contrast, is the Biskuitthat you would put at the bottom of a Torte--and in the middle of Torte, as many times as you want, and on the top of Torte, if you want it there too. That is what makeTortenbodenfundamentally different from Kuchenboden. (If you are thinking that the big difference is Murbeteig, think again; our Bavarian Kochbuchrecommends Murbeteigunder bothKuchen andTorten.)

Torte is almost always made with layers of sponge cake, with filling in between and optional stuff on top. Kuchen is just one layer of cake--sponge cake if you want, but any other kind of cake is fine too, including Murbeteigall by itself--with optional stuff on top.

Did you catch that?

Torte: layers of cake with stuff in betweenand optional stuff on top.
Kuchen: one layer of cake with optional stuff on top.

In between, Torte. On top, Kuchen.

For Americans, layers of cake with stuff in between is called "layer cake." A layer of cake with stuff on top is also cake. It's all cake. Torte is fancy cake.

So in the context of makingObstkuchen andTorte, the question "Kuchenboden oder Tortenboden" is a weird cultural thing--a sort of cake phoneme--because the cake parts of bothBödenare THE SAME THING. Bake a batch of Biskuitteig forObstkuchen, and voilà (or schau hier): Kuchenboden. Layer those babies, and voilà/schau hier: Tortenboden. Indeed, the recipe we eventually chose for the Kuchendescribes the result asLuftigt-leichter Kuchen, perfekt für Torten--"light-as-air cake, perfect for Torte."

I double checked with S. "Did you really say 'Kuchenboden oder Tortenboden'?" "Yes," he said, "because they're different."

Perhaps he was thinking ahead to the Nusstorte(nut torte) I was going to bake. While you probably wouldn't add nuts to BiskuitteigforObstkuchen, they're certainly fair game in plain ol' non-Obst Kuchen (which remains Kuchenforever and a day unless you layer it--then BAM, Torte).

Here's a photo of a hazelnut-almond Torte I made in Steinebach last summer (and a photo of H helping). The four layers were laced with Kirschwasser and filled with cherry jam, chocolate cream, and sour cherries, then covered with more chocolate cream.

Exceptions to the rules

Rules wouldn't be rules if there weren't exceptions. Here are four:

1. TinyObstkuchen are calledObsttörtchen, because why the hell not? The -chenending is a diminutive suffix--little fruit tortelets--and because adding -chenchanges the German o to an ö, let's change the vowel in English too and call them tartlets. This is allowed only because they're cute, and probably necessary because Fructhkuchenchenis too hard to say (butObstkuchleinisn't, and it's not like being difficult to pronounce stops other German words from existing). Notethat chenin Kuchenis not diminutive--it's Kuch-en, not Ku-chen. I'm going to take a stab at a pun by observing that a diminutive cow might be a Kuhchen--but no German would ever pronounce Kuchen(coo-hen) and Kuhchen(coo-hyen) the sameway, so no German would ever find that pun remotely funny.


2. Linzertorte, already controversial in its own right, is actually Kuchen, according to the in between / on toprule. It's also Kuchenaccording to the Torte-is-usually-sponge-cake rule. It made me very happy to discover, browsing through the index of our Bavarian Kochbuch, that the Bible of Bavarian cooking calls it Linzerkuchen.


3. Sometimes Kuchencan have an extra layer of Teigon top--e.g. a layer of Murbeteig on the bottom,with apples on top, and then another layer of Murbeteigon top of that. This is called gedeckter Apfelkuchen--covered apple cake--rather than Apfeltorte, because it lacks the sponge cake that is essential for allTorte (except Linzertorte, which is really agedeckter Kuchen, andObsttörtchen, which are diminutive.) I hope you are following the logic here.


4. Finally, S says there is Bodenlose Kaesekuchen--bottomless cheesecake--which, as you might guess, has no base layer of cake and is entirely made of the optional stuff on top. To confirm, we looked it up in the Kochbuch, where it is called Quarktorte ohne Boden--cheese TORTE without bottom. S says "this is a dumb cookbook."

Why certain Germans insist on calling pie "Kuchen"

Pie has its very own word in English, because unlike Torte and Kuchen, pie is NOT cake. Even assuming all pies had double crusts--which they don't--pie is NOT gedeckter Kuchen, because pie crust is neither cake nor shortbread.

Pie does consist of a base layer of non-sponge flour-based dough, with stuffon top, so it is more akin toKuchenthan toTorte--but that does not make pie "cake" any more than saying humans are "birds" because humans are more akin to birds than to boulders. If German can borrow words like Spaghetti, Toast, and Computer from other languages, it can borrow Pei.

One more rule

Our Bavarian neighbor F arrived on Sunday eager to talk definitions. He suggested that Tortefilling almost always involves cream. This would explain why gedeckte Apfelkuchencan never be Torte, even though it's layered. It might squeak past the "usually sponge cake" rule, but the lack of cream keeps it out of the realm ofTorte.This might also explain why bottomless cheesecake might be considered Torte, given the creamy dairy content.

Well, you might think that. But if you Google gedeckte Apfe..., oh dear:the search brings up both Apfelkuchen and Apfeltorte, and the photos look identical. To that, we say, "perhaps it's a regional difference" (which is our way of saying "uncle! We give up!").

Test your understanding

After lengthy discussion and Q&A with our neighbors, we gave them a quiz. Can you tell what's what? Answers and recipes are below.

A (left); B (right)

C

D

E

Answers:
A: Pie. This is pie. It is not cake. It is pie.
B:Obstkuchen.
C: Pie. Why is this so difficult for you?
D:Obstkuchen.
E: Trick question. There's visible cream and there's presumably cake underneath that, but you can't tell if it's Torteor Kuchenwithout cutting it open. But by process of elimination in this particular context, you know it has to be Torte.(If this question were on the ACT/SAT, the test-writers would call Torte the "best answer," which would annoy teens who understand nuance and complexity.)