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Dessert

Cracker Pudding

A custard-like dish made with crackers, wine, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the crackers, wine, salt, nutmeg, sugar, and melted butter in a bowl.

  2. Beat the eggs until frothy and mix them with the milk.

  3. Combine the egg mixture with the cracker mixture and let it sit until the crackers soften.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set.

  2. Serve warm.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Nutmeg + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Crackers
Provide the bulk and starch that soak up the liquid and give the pudding body.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its structure and tender texture.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that softens the crackers and forms the custard with the eggs.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a softer, more tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the savoury notes of the nutmeg and wine.

The step that matters

Letting the crackers soften before baking. The crackers need time to absorb the egg and milk mixture; if they are baked too soon, dry pieces stay hard and the pudding turns out uneven in texture.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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