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Cheese Crackers

A baked cracker made with flour, cornmeal, butter, milk, salt, baking powder, cheese, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Margaret Brown · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Cheese Crackers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather one and a half pints of flour, one-half pint of cornmeal, one teaspoon of salt, one teaspoon of baking powder, one tablespoon of butter, and a little more than one-half pint of milk.

  2. Sift together flour, cornmeal, salt, and baking powder.

  3. Rub in the cold butter.

Make the dough

  1. Add the milk.

  2. Mix into a smooth, rather firm dough.

  3. Flour the board.

  4. Turn out the dough.

  5. Give it a roll or two quickly, and roll it to the thickness of a quarter of an inch.

Cut and bake

  1. Cut out with a large round cutter.

  2. Glaze the top as you would pies, and sprinkle cheese and cayenne pepper over the top.

  3. Bake ten minutes in a hot oven.

Variation

  1. Cheese straws can be made nearly the same way out of puff paste cut thin about 1/4 of a yard long.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

718Calories
22 gProtein
21 gFat
110 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Cayenne1 tsp (1.8g)6
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Margaret Brown. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Butter + milktop 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 + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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
Gluten from the flour forms the network that holds the crackers together.
Cornmeal
Adds a coarser, crunchier texture than flour alone.
Butter
Fat tenderises the dough and shortens gluten strands for a crisp bite.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough comes together into a smooth, firm mass.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the crackers rise slightly and lighten.

The step that matters

Keep the dough handling light. Working dough develops gluten, which makes crackers tough. Rolling only a time or two keeps them tender. Cold butter rubbed in stays in small pieces that melt during baking, leaving a flaky, crisp texture.

“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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