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Crackers and Marmalade

A simple snack of soda crackers toasted, softened in boiling water, buttered, layered with marmalade, and briefly baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,301 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Crackers and Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Toast the soda crackers.

  2. Dip them in boiling water for 1 minute.

  3. Spread a little sweet butter on each cracker.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer orange marmalade or other preserve between the crackers.

  2. Top with plenty of marmalade on the top cracker.

  3. Place in the oven at 400°F (200°C) for 2-3 minutes before serving.

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. Butter + orangetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Soda crackers
Form the crisp, light base that holds the butter and preserve layers.
Sweet butter
Adds fat and richness, and coats the cracker surface to keep it from tasting dry.
Orange marmalade
Adds sweetness and bright citrus acidity, plus moisture to the layers.

The step that matters

Dipping the crackers in boiling water. Crackers soften quickly in hot water because their starch absorbs moisture. Leaving them in too long makes them soggy and weak, so they lose the crisp structure that holds the layers together.

“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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