Name: Cracker Pie
Ingredients: 3 crackers; 1 cup water; 1 cup sugar; 1 teaspoon tartaric acid; lemon (to taste)

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cracker Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Roll the crackers into small pieces.
Add the rolled crackers to the water.
Stir in the sugar and tartaric acid.
Flavor with lemon to taste.

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.

Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Crackers: Absorb the water and soften, giving the filling body and thickness.
Water: Hydrates the crackers and dissolves the sugar and tartaric acid.
Sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the sourness.
Tartaric acid: Adds a sharp, sour bite that gives the pie its tang.

“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.