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Cheese and Cracker Pudding
Fill a shallow pudding dish with alternate layers of broken crackers, grated cheese and a sprinkling of salt and pepper. Over the top layer put I spoonful of butter in bits. Pour in enough milk to just show under the top layer.
Cover and bake in a moderate oven for threequarters of an hour, uncovering when two-thirds done.
A frugal cheese bake that works as long as you keep the milk level low — this is meant to set into a savory pudding, not swim.
- Moderate ovenConventionally read as about 350-375F. At 45 minutes the top layer of crackers and butter should be browned and crisp while the interior is just set.
- CrackersMost likely plain unsalted soda or water crackers, roughly broken rather than crumbed. Saltines work, but cut the added salt back sharply; unsalted tops or plain oyster crackers are probably closer to the intent.
- CheeseThe recipe names none; a firm aged Cheddar or an American factory cheese would suit. As a rough guide, about 6 to 8 oz for a shallow dish holding a quart; a young mild cheese will give a milder, wetter result.
- The milk level is the hinge"Enough milk to just show under the top layer" means the liquid stops short of the surface — usually 1 to 1 1/2 cups for a quart dish. Add more and the crackers collapse into paste instead of setting; the top layer must stay dry enough to crisp.
- Cover, then uncoverCovered for the first 30 minutes so the crackers hydrate in steam, uncovered for the last 15 so the butter and cheese brown. Foil does the job if your dish has no lid.
- Butter"1 spoonful" is most likely a tablespoon, dotted over the surface. It is what browns the top; do not skip it or substitute a pour of oil.
- Yield and servingA quart dish would feed roughly three or four as a supper dish with bread and a salad or stewed tomatoes. Best served soon after it leaves the oven — it firms and dries as it cools.
Cracker puddings belong to the family of savory bread-and-cheese bakes — Welsh rabbit, cheese strata, scalloped cheese — that let a household stretch a small amount of cheese into a full meat-free supper. Crackers, being shelf-stable and cheap by the barrel, were a standard pantry staple in American kitchens well into the twentieth century, and cookbooks aimed at low-cost cookery often turned to them in place of bread. The absence of eggs here is the telling detail: this is a binder-free pudding that sets purely on softened cracker starch and melted cheese. The milk measurement, meanwhile, is given by eye rather than by cup — the cook was expected to judge it against whatever dish she owned.