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Dessert

Cracker and Jam Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with crackers, jam, eggs, milk, butter, sugar, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 and Jam Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Heat the milk and cracker crumbs together until scalded.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

  3. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  4. Add the lemon juice and grated peel.

  5. Stir in the beaten egg yolks, soaked cracker mixture, and milk.

  6. Fold in the beaten egg whites last.

Bake and serve

  1. Spread the jam at the bottom of a baking dish.

  2. Pour the mixture on top of the jam.

  3. Bake covered for 30 minutes.

  4. Uncover to brown.

  5. Serve the pudding cold.

  6. Sprinkle powdered sugar over the pudding.

  7. Top with meringue if desired.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 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).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the custard and whites, folded in last, lighten the pudding.
Cracker crumbs
Soaked in hot milk, they add body and a toasted, bready flavour to the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps tenderise the custard as it creams with butter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, softer texture in the custard.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets the custard and softens the cracker crumbs.
Jam
Forms a sweet, fruity layer at the bottom that becomes the sauce when inverted.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites last. Whipped whites hold air that lightens the pudding. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air from collapsing so the texture stays light.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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