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Dessert

Soda Crackers

Soda crackers are baked crackers made with butter, flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, cream, eggs, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Soda Crackers

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. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. Rub butter into flour mixed with cream of tartar.

  2. Dissolve baking soda in cream.

  3. Beat eggs and mix into flour mixture.

  4. Add milk gradually until dough is right consistency to roll.

  5. Add a little salt to taste.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll dough and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Rubbed into the flour, it coats flour particles and makes the crackers tender and short.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once mixed with liquid and eggs.
Cream of tartar
Acidic powder that reacts with baking soda to help the crackers rise and lighten.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce gas for rising and aids browning.
Eggs
Add richness and binding, helping hold the dough together.

The step that matters

Adding milk gradually. Flour absorbs liquid at different rates, and too much milk makes the dough sticky and hard to roll, while too little makes it crumbly. Adding it slowly lets you stop at the right consistency.

“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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