Kitchener bun

Kitchener bun

Type	Doughnut
Place of origin	Australia
Region or state	South Australia
Main ingredients	Dough, raspberry or strawberry jam, cream

The Kitchener bun is a type of doughnut made and sold in South Australia since 1915.¹ It consists of a bun sometimes baked, sometimes fried, made from a sweet yeasted dough similar to that used for making doughnuts, split and then filled with raspberry or strawberry jam and cream, most often with a dusting of sugar on the top.

The Kitchener bun resembles the Berliner,² a doughnut of German origin – although distinguished from it by an open face and the use of more cream than jam – and was, in fact, known as such until anti-German sentiment in World War I led to its renaming in honour of the British field marshal Lord Kitchener.³

In a 1930 recipe the jam is sealed into the doughnut before deep-frying in fat, and there is no mention of cream⁴ until 1934.⁵ Ten years later, an Unley Road baker was fined £15 2 (around $1000) for using cream in his Kitchener buns, contrary to provisions in the National Security Regulations.⁶