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Dessert

Cracker Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, sugar, crackers, raisins, and spices, served with a boiled sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 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 milk, sugar, rolled crackers, raisins or currants, baking powder, eggs, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. While baking, stir once or twice to keep the fruit from settling.

  2. For the sauce, mix sugar and flour into a smooth paste.

  3. Add nutmeg, salt, and boiling water to the paste, and bring to a boil.

  4. Serve the pudding warm with the 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 set the pudding as it bakes.
Rolled crackers
Soak up the milk and give the pudding its body and texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that sets into a custard-like pudding.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the pudding and lightens its crumb.
Raisins or currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the pudding.
Flour
Thickens the sauce into a smooth, pourable paste.

The step that matters

Stir the fruit during baking. Raisins and currants are heavier than the batter, so they sink unless stirred. Stirring once or twice while it bakes keeps the fruit evenly distributed.

“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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