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Dessert

A Porcupine Pudding

A sweet rice pudding with almonds, cooked in milk and eggs, served with cream or custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

A Porcupine Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil the rice in new milk until tender and not too dry.

Combine and cook

  1. In a bowl, mix the beaten eggs, sugar, and orange juice.

  2. Combine the rice mixture with the egg mixture and mix well.

  3. Pour into a mold and boil for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Turn out onto a dish and decorate with almond slips.

  2. Serve with cream or 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. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Rice + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooked in milk until tender, it forms the body and bulk of the pudding.
Eggs
Set when heated, binding the rice and giving the pudding its firm structure.
New milk
Cooks the rice and adds moisture and richness to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to the pudding's flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding in the mold. Egg proteins set as the mixture heats, so the pudding needs steady, gentle boiling for the full time to become firm. Too little time leaves it loose and wet in the centre.

Swap the orange

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

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

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