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Water Crackers

A simple cracker made with flour, salt, baking soda, lard, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Water Crackers

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, salt, and baking soda.

  2. Add lard and mix well.

  3. Gradually add sweet milk until a dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough thin and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Lard
Adds fat that makes the crackers tender and crisp when baked.
Baking soda
Raises the pH of the dough, promoting browning during baking.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough holds together and can be rolled.

The step that matters

Roll the dough thin. Thin dough dries out and crisps during baking, while thick dough stays soft and doughy in the center. Even thickness also helps the crackers bake at the same rate.

“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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