| What
cracker goes best with peanut butter? How about turkey?
We tell all
By Andrea Edmunds
November 15, 2006 | I like crackers
a lot. Sometimes, when I'm eating crackers with cheese,
I really think there isn't anything better in the world.
But the next day I pull out the saltines and some cottage
cheese and I'm in heaven.
It got me to thinking. What
is the best topping for crackers? Is there a different,
better topping for each different type of cracker? I
knew I wouldn't be able to sleep until I found an answer
so I went to the kitchen and pulled out four boxes of
crackers:
-- Saltines - they go with anything
-- Ritz - enough salt and substance that they're satisfying
-- Club - my roommate likes these, I'm not a huge fan
-- Triscuts - these crackers are wonderful with cheese
Now I had to decide the toppings.
This was obviously the most important part because crackers
can be eaten by themselves, one doesn't need a topping.
Sometimes the topping is just not right for the cracker
it ruins both the cracker and the topping. However,
if I get the right topping on the cracker, it's like
a party in my mouth. A really, really fun party.
There was a lot of pressure to get
just the right toppings, but I decided to go with some
safe ones:
-- Cheese - this goes well on any
cracker
-- Cottage Cheese - sometimes I crave this so much my
mouth starts watering
-- Peanut Butter - ever tried it on crackers? It's good
(hint: it's also really good on Oreos)
-- Turkey - Hey, why not throw a little variety in there?
After much sampling, deliberating,
and then sampling again, I decided to review each topping
and how it goes with the cracker rather than breaking
it down and analyzing each cracker.
And now, here are the results:
Turkey
I decided to start with my least
favorite first. Turkey had a hard time meshing with
all the crackers. It was just too much for the saltines.
After trying it on all the crackers, I decided that
turkey needs a cracker with substance. This means your
typical cracker either needs to have a lot to it, like
a Triscut, or the cracker needs to have a lot of flavor
like the Ritz.
Turkey: Ritz (I guess someone before
me already figured that out. Ever notice the crackers
in Lunchables?)
Peanut Butter
I was really excited to try the peanut
butter, it has always been a surprise to me when I find
out what peanut butter can go with, so I figured it
would go well with all the crackers. As predicted, it
was sensational on top of the saltines and it was OK
on the club.
Triscut had the exact opposite effect
than it did with turkey. Peanut butter is a pretty substantial
topping, so I think it goes better with lighter crackers.
With the Triscut I felt like I had so much food in my
mouth I was eating a meal, this was no snack. Peanut
butter also had a hard time with the Club and Ritz crackers
because they had too much of a buttery taste to them.
Despite the important science behind my experiment,
all I really wanted to do was spit out the cracker.
Peanut butter: saltines
Cottage Cheese
I know a lot of people have issues
with cottage cheese mostly because of the texture. However,
I think they just don't realize cottage cheese's potential.
It goes great on a lot of different things and it was
no different when I tried it on the crackers.
I knew it would be good on the saltines.
That's pretty much my lunch every day (hey, at least
I'm getting some calcium) so I didn't spend a lot of
time analyzing it. I also figured it would be good on
the Triscuts because my mother swears it's the most
wonderful thing in the world. It was really good, in
fact, I liked cottage cheese on the Triscuts better
than on the saltines.
After what had happened with the
peanut butter and the last two crackers, I was a little
nervous to try this. However, I was able to push my
squeamishness aside and I ate both with a generous portion
of cottage cheese on top. There was no hanging over
the sink, spitting this time -- but I didn't like it
as much. It seems like both these crackers are too sweet
for such a sweet topping. Let me explain, it wasn't
bad. In fact if I were starving in the desert and that's
all I had to eat, I would eat it and probably enjoy
it. However, in my kitchen with many more food options
than the desert, I'm going to say they failed as toppings.
Cottage cheese: Triscuts
Cheese
And now the topping I was waiting
for all afternoon. It was a bit of a letdown after all
the other toppings because I knew that cheese went well
with every cracker. What was I going to judge? How could
I say it went better with one cracker more than another?
It goes well on everything. I decided that since I knew
cheese went well with every cracker, I would judge this
topping by how much I ate of the different kinds of
crackers. That way, the one type of cracker I ate the
most with the cheese would obviously be best tasting.
An hour later when I ran out of cheese
and with empty cracker packages strewn around me, I
realized I had just eaten an entire block of cheese
and I didn't feel very good. So for right now, I'm going
to withhold any vote on this topping and I'm going to
hang out in the bathroom for a while.
NW
RB
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