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Dessert

Butter Crackers

A simple cracker made with butter, flour, baking soda, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Butter Crackers

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.

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour until well combined.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in a little milk and strain it into the flour mixture.

  3. Add a little salt and enough milk to form a dough that can be rolled out.

Shape and bake

  1. Beat the dough well with a rolling pin and roll it out thin.

  2. Cut the rolled dough into small cracker shapes.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until hard and crispy.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Coats the flour particles and adds richness and tenderness to the crackers.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough to lift it slightly and encourage browning.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough can come together and be rolled out.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough thin. Thin dough dries and crisps evenly in the oven. Thick pieces stay soft in the centre, so the crackers may not turn hard and crispy throughout.

“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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