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Dessert

A Porcupine Pudding

A pudding made from rice, milk, eggs, ratafia, sugar, lemon, 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 ↓

A Porcupine Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

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

  2. Add beaten eggs, ratafia, sugar, and grated lemon; mix well.

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

Serve

  1. Turn onto a hot dish and stick with almonds.

  2. Serve with rich custard around it.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the body of the pudding as its starch swells and softens during simmering.
Milk
Cooks the rice into a creamy, moist base and adds richness.
Eggs
Set when heated, binding the pudding into a firm, sliceable mass.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the milk and eggs.
Ratafia
Adds a distinctive almond-like aroma to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding gently for the full 1.5 hours. Egg proteins set gradually as heat reaches them. Too little heat or a short time leaves the centre loose and wet, while overly vigorous heat can make the texture tough and rubbery. Keep the water steadily simmering throughout.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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