Skip to main content
Dessert

Egg Cracknels

Egg Cracknels are small dough pieces boiled and then baked to a crisp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Egg Cracknels

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift together the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Rub in the cold butter until well combined.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and mix into a firm, smooth dough.

  4. Flour a board, turn out the dough, and knead rapidly for a few minutes.

  5. Cover with a damp towel and let rest for 15 minutes.

  6. Roll out the dough to ⅛ inch thick and cut with a biscuit cutter.

Boil and bake

  1. Prepare a large pot of boiling water and a large tin pan of cold water.

  2. Drop the cut dough into the boiling water a few at a time.

  3. When they rise to the surface and curl at the edges, remove with a skimmer and place in cold water.

  4. Once all are cooked, lay them on greased baking tins.

  5. Bake in a fairly hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and sets during baking.
Butter
Cold fat rubbed into the flour keeps the dough tender and flaky.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness, moisture, and structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crackles brown in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the crackles rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Boiling the cut dough. Dropping the dough into boiling water, then removing it once it rises and curls, sets its shape before baking. Cooking too long makes the pieces heavy, and moving them to cold water stops the cooking.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes