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Dessert

Cracker Fruit-pudding

A baked pudding made from crushed crackers, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, raisins, and currants.

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 Fruit-pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the crushed crackers with boiling milk.

  2. Add butter, brown sugar, beaten eggs, raisins, and currants, then stir until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding when baked.
Crackers
Provide the starchy base that soaks up the hot milk and gives the pudding its body.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the crushed crackers and forms the custard base.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses flavor, and helps the pudding brown lightly in the oven.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add tart, chewy bursts of fruit flavor distributed through the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves the pudding loose and wet, while overbaking makes it dry and rubbery, so check for a set centre.

Swap the currant

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

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

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