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Dessert

Soda Cracker Pudding

A baked pudding made with soda crackers, milk, spices, raisins, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Soda 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 the base

  1. Soak the buttered soda crackers overnight in the milk.

  2. Add the cloves, cinnamon, raisins, sugar, and the yolks of the eggs to the soaked crackers.

  3. Mix well and pour into a baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

Make the meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add 3 tablespoons of sugar and flavor to taste.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Clove + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Soda crackers
Soak up the milk and soften into a tender, bread-pudding-like base.
Milk
Provides the liquid that soaks the crackers and sets as the pudding bakes.
Egg yolks
Thicken the pudding as they cook, giving it a set, custard-like texture.
Egg whites
Whipped stiff, they trap air and create a light, airy meringue.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture scattered through the pudding.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff, then add the sugar gradually. Whites need to be beaten until they form firm peaks, and sugar added slowly helps stabilise the foam so it holds its shape and stays light rather than collapsing or weeping.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, raisin, sugar, egg. 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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