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Dessert

Cracker Pudding

A baked pudding made with beef suet, cracker crumbs, milk, eggs, 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

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. Pour the milk over the cracker crumbs and let them soak.

  2. Mix the suet with the soaked cracker crumbs.

  3. Add the sugar, salt, and beaten eggs, and stir well.

  4. Pour the mixture into a greased pie dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 40 to 50 minutes.

  2. Serve hot with jam or fruit 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. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 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).

Milk and sugar 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 set it into a firm, custard-like pudding as it bakes.
Cracker crumbs
Soak up the milk to form the body of the pudding.
Milk
Provides moisture and softens the crumbs into a custard base.
Beef suet
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until just set. Eggs set as they heat, so overbaking can make the pudding dry, curdled, or rubbery. Pulling it when the centre is just firm lets residual heat finish it gently.

“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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