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Dessert

Egg Cracknels

Egg Crackers are small, lightly sweetened crackers made from flour, sugar, butter, eggs, and baking powder, boiled then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Egg Cracknels

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a fairly hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Sift together the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Rub in the cold butter until well combined.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and mix into a firm, smooth dough.

  4. Flour a board and turn out the dough; knead rapidly for a few minutes.

  5. Cover the dough with a damp towel and let it rest for 15 minutes.

  6. Roll out the dough to a thickness of ½ inch and cut with a biscuit cutter.

Boil and bake

  1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and prepare a large tin of cold water.

  2. Drop the crackers into the boiling water a few at a time.

  3. When they rise to the surface and curl at the edges, remove them with a skimmer and place them in the cold water.

  4. Once all are cooked, lay them on greased baking tins.

  5. Bake in a fairly hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once mixed with liquid and kneaded.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness, moisture and structure to the crackers.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and a rich, flaky texture.
Royal baking powder
Releases gas in the dough to help the crackers rise and lighten in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crackers brown lightly during baking.

The step that matters

Boiling the crackers before baking. Dropping the cut dough into boiling water sets the surface quickly; removing them once they rise and curl, then cooling them, gives a firm skin that shapes the crackers before they bake. Overcooking can make them tough.

“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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