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Dessert

Cracker Cake

A sweet cake made from crackers, walnuts, chocolate, milk, sugar, butter, spices, vanilla, lemon, eggs, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 Cake

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).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the finely rolled crackers, chopped walnuts, melted chocolate, milk, sugar, and butter.

  2. Add the baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla extract, and lemon extract to the mixture.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs until frothy, then fold them into the mixture until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Cinnamon + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs add structure and lift, binding the crumbs and helping the cake set as it bakes.
Crackers
Finely rolled crackers form the crumb base that gives the cake its body in place of flour.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and turn light in texture.
Chocolate
Adds richness, fat and flavor, and helps keep the crumb moist.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the crumb.
Walnuts
Add texture and a toasty, slightly bitter note that contrasts with the sweetness.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten eggs. Beaten eggs trap air that gives lift. Stirring them in hard or overmixing knocks that air out, so the cake bakes up denser and flatter.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, milk, sugar, butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, 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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