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Dessert

Cracker Pudding

A steamed pudding made from crackers soaked in milk, eggs, raisins, currants, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

  1. Roll the crackers and soak them in 1 quart of milk overnight.

  2. In the morning, add the beaten eggs, sugar, raisins, currants, flour, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

  3. Mix well and steam for 4 to 5 hours.

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

Crackers
Soak up the milk and give the pudding its body and soft, bready structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the crackers soften in and the eggs set into.
Eggs
Set as the pudding steams, binding the mixture into a tender custard.
Flour
Thickens the mixture slightly so it holds together rather than running loose.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the milk and eggs.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy pockets throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming for 4 to 5 hours. Eggs set gently as the custard heats. If the heat is too fierce or the pudding cooks too long, the egg proteins tighten and the texture turns grainy, dry, or curdled.

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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