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Dessert

Cracker Pudding

A sweet pudding made with milk, sugar, eggs, powdered crackers, raisins, nutmeg, cinnamon, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

Mix and bake

  1. Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.

  3. Bake for 2 hours.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the pudding and help it set into a soft, custard-like texture.
Crackers
Provide starch and body that thicken the milk into a pudding.
Milk
Supplies moisture and the liquid base that the eggs and crackers set in.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and contributes to browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites and yolks separately. Separate beating matters because whites whipped to soft peaks can add lightness, while yolks stay rich. Overbeating whites can make them dry and grainy, so beat only until the stated stage is reached.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonfits about as well

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