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Dessert

Cracker Plum Pudding

A layered pudding of Boston crackers, raisins, custard, and butter baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Cracker Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the custard and crackers

  1. Make a very sweet custard with the milk and eggs.

  2. Split the crackers.

  3. Butter the crackers well.

Layer the pudding

  1. Layer raisins in a large dish.

  2. Layer crackers over the raisins.

  3. Pour a little warm custard over the crackers.

  4. Let the crackers soak.

  5. Press more raisins into the crackers with a knife.

  6. Add another layer of crackers, custard, and fruit.

  7. Repeat layering until you have four layers, finishing with enough custard to cover the crackers.

  8. Prepare the pudding the night before to allow the crackers to soak.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

  2. Add more custard during the first half hour to prevent browning.

  3. Cover the top with paper while baking.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Boston crackers
Form the bulk of the layers and absorb the custard to become soft and cake-like.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, providing moisture that sets with the eggs.
Eggs
Set the custard as it bakes, giving the pudding its structure and body.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and fruit flavour between the cracker layers.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the cracker surfaces brown.

The step that matters

Adding more custard during the first half hour of baking. Crackers at the top can dry out and brown too quickly before the custard sets. Adding more custard early keeps the surface moist and helps prevent scorching.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter. 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.

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