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Cracker Pudding

A steamed pudding made from soaked crackers, milk, eggs, sugar, raisins, currants, flour, spices, topped with a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cracker Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

  1. Soak the rolled crackers in 1 quart of milk overnight.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, sugar, raisins, currants, flour, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg to the soaked crackers, then mix well and steam for 4 to 5 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. Beat 1 cup of sugar and 1 egg until frothy.

  2. Pour 1 cup of hot milk over the mixture and add a little salt.

  3. Flavor the sauce with wine or brandy.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the pudding and give it a set, custard-like structure as they cook.
Crackers
Soak up the milk and form the soft body of the pudding.
Milk
Hydrates the crackers and provides the liquid that sets into a tender custard.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Flour
Thickens the mixture slightly, helping it hold its shape when steamed.

The step that matters

Steam for 4 to 5 hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the egg-thickened custard through without curdling or boiling. Too much heat can make the eggs turn grainy and the pudding tough, so keep the water at a steady simmer.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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