Name: Cracker Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pint sweet milk; 5 Boston crackers; 1 cup raisins; ½ cup butter; ¾ cup sugar; ½ teaspoon ground cloves; ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon; ½ teaspoon grated nutmeg

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

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

Soak the rolled crackers in the milk overnight.
Add the raisins, butter, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg to the soaked crackers, then mix well and pour into a baking dish.

Bake and serve

Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set and golden.
Serve with 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.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Boston crackers: Soak up the milk and form the soft, bready body of the pudding.
Sweet milk: Hydrates the crackers and forms the custard-like base that sets in the oven.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender texture.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and contributes to browning on the baked surface.
Raisins: Add chewy pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.

Swap the raisin

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

Vanillafits better
Figfits about as well
Raisinthe original
Applefits about as well

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