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Dessert

Cracker Pudding

A baked pudding made from cracker crumbs, suet, eggs, milk, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,759 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Cracker Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the suet very fine.

  2. Beat the eggs.

  3. Soak the cracker crumbs in the milk.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the eggs and sugar with the soaked cracker crumbs.

  2. Add the suet and salt, and work to a smooth paste.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a buttered pie dish for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve with fruit sauce or stewed fruit.

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. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Beef + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it bakes.
Cracker crumbs
Provide the bulk and body of the pudding, soaking up the milk.
Milk
Softens the crumbs and adds moisture so the pudding stays tender.
Beef suet
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a smooth, moist texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the savory richness of the suet.

The step that matters

Work the suet into a smooth paste. Suet must be chopped very fine and fully worked in so it distributes evenly. Pieces left large can melt unevenly during baking, leaving greasy pockets and an uneven texture.

“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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