Iced Screams, Cake of the Lost, and other nightmarish meals you can cook in No Man's Sky

(Image credit: Hello Games)

There's a lot of gross stuff in No Man's Sky—misshapen creatures, whispering eggs, writhing plants, and alien poop—but thanks to the Beyond update, now you can cook and eat most of it. Lucky you! Combining things like alien eggs and milk, exotic vegetables and crystals, raw meat and organs, and other oddities in the nutrient processor can result in nourishing yet absolutely horrifying meals.

No Man's Sky players and data miners have been hard at work trying to discover all the cooking recipes added in Beyond, and they've put together several big lists and helpful spreadsheets I'll link at the bottom of this page.

Thanks to their hard work, your stomach can now rumble both before and after you eat. Here are the most nightmarish meals you can cook in No Man's Sky.

No Man's Sky

(Image credit: Hello Games)

Itching, Creeping Honey Sponge

A honey sponge sounds delicious, something sweet and light and delightfully sticky. But if you put this in your mouth it might taste you back. The itching and creeping part comes from the batter (called Writhing Roiling Batter) which can be made by combining delicate meringue, refined flour, and a larval core. Larval cores, remember, come from Whispering Eggs, which spawn Biological Horrors. Hungry yet?

Jellied Fur Tart

Made with a pie casing and some jelly. The jelly is called Furball Jelly. Furball Jelly is made from sugar and Leopard Fruit, so I guess now we know why Leopard Fruit is called Leopard Fruit. It's not because it's got spots.

Flavoursome Organs

The name of this dish, made from Stewed Organs and Flavoursome Sauce, is just too vague for my liking. Organs—well, there are lots of different organs, and I'm guessing that goes double for alien creatures. Which organs am I eating, exactly? And flavoursome isn't a word I trust. Flavor could mean anything. I mean, gross things have flavors too, things like bile and sewage and bleu cheese dressing. I don't trust it this dish at all.

BLASTERCHEF

No Man's Sky

(Image credit: Hello Games)

Too nervous to eat these meals yourself? Bring them to Cronus on the multiplayer Nexus. He'll give you a few nanites and lots of insults. He's a galactic Gordon Ramsay.

'Apple' Ice Cream

Apple Ice Cream doesn't sound bad, but 'Apple' Ice Cream makes me stop the spoon on the way to my mouth. Like the Saturday Night Live commercial for 'Almost Pizza,' you should be hesitant to eat something that is very nearly an apple but is not enough of an apple to the extent that it requires quotes around it. The dish is prepared from Frozen Tubers and Crab 'Apple'. I've found Crab 'Apple' and it came from a crab. But isn't quite an Apple. It's an 'Apple.'

Unbound Monstrosity

Be careful while baking the Fluffy Throatripper! It takes Cream, Writhing Roiling Batter, and Cactus Jelly. But if you mix Cream, Writhing Roiling Batter, and Anamalous Jam, you'll make an Unbound Monstrosity. You definitely don't want that. There's really no bigger faux-pas than when your guests are expecting to swallow the razor-sharp cactus needles in the Fluffy Throatripper and instead wind up eating an Unbound Monstrosity. The party will be ruined.

Iced Screams

Combine one Hypnotic Eye with one Frost Crystal. Serve Cold.

So very cold.

Cake of the Lost

You know those office birthday parties for an employee who hasn't really been with the company long enough to get to know anyone, and maybe three people signed the card and there's lots of empty space because they left room for everyone else to sign but no one else did, and the breakroom was out of plastic forks so most people are using plastic spoons, and the only drinks are cans of room temperature Diet Cherry 7-Up and there aren't enough so it's divvied up in dented little foam cups, and during the off-key rendition of Happy Birthday one person gets the guy's name wrong, and the only conversation is when someone asks "So, got big plans for your birthday?" and the birthday boy says "Not really, no" and then its just dead silence while people stand around until someone is finally brave enough to make an excuse for leaving?

This is the cake for that party. It's made with Monstrous Custard and Writhing Roiling Batter.

Solidified Grease Pie

Made with a Pie Case and Regis Grease (I don't know what that is and at this point I don't want to know), it probably looks tasty from a distance. I mean, it's in a pie casing, all nice and crispy, and maybe you'd think it's cream or something in there. 

But it's not. It's grease. Solidified grease. Enjoy.

Hungry for more? Here's some helpful sources of No Man's Sky cooking recipes via Reddit:

This massive list of (presumably datamined) recipes by RogerHN on the modding Discord. It's a monstrously huge jpg so I'd suggest you download so you can zoom in.

This huge work-in-progress spreadsheet by ItsSpiffy on Reddit with an additional tab for Nanite data.

Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.