scrunch v.

1814, "crush with the teeth," a variant of craunch (1630s), which probably is of imitative origin. Meaning "act or proceed with a sound of crunching" is by 1849. Related: Crunched; crunching.

The noun is 1836, "an act of crunching," from the verb; the sense of "critical moment" was popularized 1939 by Winston Churchill, who had used it in his 1938 biography of Marlborough.

initial sound-cluster, containing the exceptions to the general rule that sc- or sk- in Modern English indicates a word not from Old English (whose sc- regularly becomes sh-). Words often are found in pairs, especially in dialect and slang, one in scr-, one in shr- (or schr-); a prominent surviving example is shred and screed, the same Old English word surviving in two forms now much different in meaning.

OED also notes that "Many English words beginning with scr- agree more or less closely in meaning with other words differing from them in form only by the absence of the initial s" (such as crunch/scrunch, scringe, an alternative form of cringe, etc.)

It does not appear that these coincidences are due to any one general cause ..., but it is probable that the existence of many pairs of synonyms with scr- and cr- produced a tendency to change cr-, in words expressive of sounds or physical movements, into scr- so as to render the word echoic or phonetically symbolic. [OED]