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Dessert

Porcupine Cake

A sweet cake topped with a custard-like cream and soft almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Porcupine Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix together the sugar, butter, egg, sweet milk, baking powder, and flour until well combined.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

  4. Let the cake cool completely.

Make the cream and serve

  1. For the cream, dissolve the corn starch in a little milk.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the beaten eggs, sugar, and the rest of the milk.

  3. Add the dissolved corn starch and cook over medium heat, stirring until it thickens like custard.

  4. Pour the cream over the cooled cake and top with soft almonds before serving.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and thicken the custard cream as they cook.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cake a tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, spreadable custard.

The step that matters

Cooking the cream over medium heat. The cream must be stirred as it cooks. Starch thickens when heated, but eggs can scramble or curdle if the mixture gets too hot or is left unstirred, leaving a lumpy custard.

“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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