Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Crackers

A sweet, lemon-flavored cracker made with sugar, lard, milk, eggs, lemon oil, baking ammonia, water, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓

Lemon Crackers

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve the baker's ammonia in warm water and let it sit for about 1 hour.

  2. In a large bowl, mix sugar, lard, sweet milk, eggs, and oil of lemon.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is very stiff.

  4. Pound the dough for 30 minutes.

Shape and bake

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

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour 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 stiff dough structure that holds the crackers together.
Lard
Adds fat that makes the crackers short and tender in texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crackers brown in the oven.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness to the crackers.
Baker's ammonia
Acts as a leavening agent that releases gas when heated, lightening the crackers.
Oil of lemon
Gives the crackers their lemon flavor and aroma.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough very thin. Thin dough dries and crisps evenly in the oven. Uneven thickness bakes unevenly, leaving thick pieces soft or doughy in the middle and thin pieces overbaked.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, egg, flour):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, egg, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes