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Dessert

Cracker Pudding

A baked pudding made with egg yolks, sugar, cracker crumbs, milk, raisins, currants, almonds, suet, cinnamon, nutmeg, and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cracker Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of 5 eggs and ½ pound sugar together until light.

  2. Soak 1 cup fine cracker crumbs in 1 pint of milk and mix with the egg mixture.

  3. Add ½ cup raisins, ¼ cup currants, 3 ounces chopped almonds, ½ pound finely chopped suet, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and a little grated nutmeg.

  4. Fold in the stiffly beaten whites of 5 eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a buttered pudding dish for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve with Wine Sauce.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the custard, while whipped whites lighten the pudding as it bakes.
Cracker crumbs
Soaked in milk, they thicken the batter and give the pudding its body.
Milk
Provides liquid that sets with the eggs into a tender, custard-like texture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and moist as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the yolks whip to a light, smooth base.
Almonds
Add crunch and a nutty richness against the soft pudding.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites beaten to stiff peaks trap air that lightens the batter. Stirring them in roughly, or deflating them, leaves a dense pudding instead of a light one.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, milk, raisin, almond, cinnamon, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk, raisin, almond, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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