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Dessert

Cracker Pudding

A sweet pudding made with crushed crackers, sugar, sweet milk, shredded coconut, eggs, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,294 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, combine crushed crackers, sugar, sweet milk, shredded coconut, and vanilla.

  3. Beat the eggs and fold in the yolks to the mixture.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until set.

  3. Whip the egg whites and spread over the top for icing before serving.

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. Coconut + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Crushed crackers
Form the bulk of the pudding and soak up the milk to give body.
Eggs
Set the custard as it bakes, and the whites are whipped into the icing.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid that the crackers absorb and that sets into a custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the custard brown lightly on top.
Shredded coconut
Adds chewy texture and a toasty, sweet flavour.

The step that matters

Bake in the preheated oven until set. Eggs set into a firm custard only when heated enough; underbaked pudding stays loose and runny in the centre, while overbaking makes it dry and rubbery. Check that the middle barely wobbles before removing it.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits about as well
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Coconutthe original

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