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Dessert

Porcupine Pudding

A steamed pudding made from Carolina rice, milk, sugar, lemon zest, eggs, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,456 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Porcupine Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash the rice in two or three waters and drain it.

  2. Combine the rice, milk, sugar, and lemon zest in a saucepan.

  3. Boil gently until the rice is tender and has absorbed all the milk, about 1 hour.

  4. Stir the rice to form a smooth paste.

  5. Mix in the beaten eggs.

Steam the pudding

  1. Grease a mold and pour the mixture into it.

  2. Cover the mold and steam the pudding for 1.5 hours, placing it on an upside-down plate in a saucepan with 3 inches of water.

Prepare the almonds and serve

  1. Blanch the almonds.

  2. Cut the blanched almonds into strips.

  3. Soak the almond strips in cold water to keep their color.

  4. Turn the pudding out onto a dish.

  5. Decorate the pudding with the almond strips.

  6. Serve the pudding with 1.5 pints of flavored custard.

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. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Carolina rice
Starch that softens as it cooks, forming the body of the pudding as it absorbs the milk.
Milk
Liquid that the rice absorbs, giving the pudding its moist, tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the rice mixture and set during steaming, giving the pudding structure.
Sweet almonds
Add nutty flavor and a contrasting texture as the decorative topping.

The step that matters

Boil gently until the rice is tender. Rice absorbs liquid slowly and can scorch or stay firm if the heat is too high or the cooking too short. Gentle heat lets the grains soften evenly while the milk is absorbed, producing a smooth paste.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, sugar, egg, almond, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, sugar, egg, almond, butter. 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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