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Dessert

A Delicate Dessert

A dessert of crackers soaked in boiling water, sweetened with sugar and nutmeg, topped with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

A Delicate Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the crackers in a dish.

  2. Pour enough boiling water over the crackers to cover them.

  3. Wait a few minutes until they swell to four or five times their original size.

Finish and serve

  1. Grate loaf sugar and a little nutmeg over the swollen crackers.

  2. Add enough cream to create a nice sauce.

  3. Serve as a light dessert.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Crackers
Swell with boiling water to form the soft, bready body of the pudding.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness to the crackers.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, creating a rich sauce.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic flavour.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling water over the crackers. The crackers need enough water to cover them so they soak evenly. If they are left partly dry, some pieces stay hard while others turn mushy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Peppermintfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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