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Dessert

Cracker Pudding

A baked dessert made with milk, eggs, crackers, sugar, baking soda, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 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 batter

  1. Warm the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, combine cracker crumbs, egg yolks, and sugar.

  3. Add salt, baking soda, and butter to the mixture.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites until well combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 20 minutes.

  2. Serve with blackberry jam and sweetened cream.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Provides liquid that hydrates the crumbs and gives the pudding a soft, custard-like body.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the custard, while beaten whites are folded in to lighten the texture.
Rolled crackers
Crumbs absorb liquid and thicken the mixture, giving the pudding its body in place of flour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches flavor and keeps the texture tender.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites trap air when whipped, which lightens the pudding. Stirring them vigorously deflates the foam, so fold gently until just combined to keep the texture light.

“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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