Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Cracker Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the custard
Soak the crushed crackers in hot milk.
Stir in a double boiler over heat until it smokes.
Add butter, baking powder, and beaten eggs.
Bake and serve
Pour into a greased pudding dish.
Bake until the custard is set.
Serve immediately with hard sauce.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Crushed crackers
- Soak up the hot milk and give the pudding its body and crumb.
- Hot milk
- Forms the liquid base that the eggs set into a custard.
- Eggs
- Set during baking to bind the pudding and give it structure.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a smoother, softer texture.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas during baking to lighten the pudding's crumb.
The step that matters
Bake until the custard is set. Egg proteins set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the pudding loose while overbaking makes it curdled, dry and weepy. Watch for a set center rather than a fixed time.
“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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