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Dessert

Porcupine Pudding

A sponge cake topped with custard, meringue, and almonds, baked until dry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,800 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Porcupine Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

  1. Bake a sponge cake and place it in a deep dish.

  2. Prepare a boiled custard using the egg yolks and milk, then pour it over the sponge cake.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then sprinkle in the sugar and spread over the top of the custard.

  2. Place the dish in a 300°F (150°C) oven to dry.

  3. Split the blanched almonds and stick them into the frosting as thickly as possible.

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 + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard that sets smooth and rich.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff meringue topping that dries to a crisp, pale layer.
Sponge cake
Forms the absorbent base that soaks up the warm custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, which thickens when the yolks cook.
Blanched almonds
Add a crunchy, nutty garnish pressed into the topping.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be beaten to stiff peaks before the sugar is added, because trapped air gives the meringue its volume. Under-beaten whites will weep or collapse in the oven.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Cocoafits about as well
  4. Walnutfits about as well

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