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Dessert

Vermicelli Pudding

A sweet pudding made with vermicelli, milk, lemon rind, cinnamon, sugar, and eggs, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Vermicelli Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the milk base

  1. Boil lemon rind and cinnamon in milk.

  2. Sweeten the milk with sugar to taste.

  3. Strain the milk.

Cook the vermicelli

  1. Add vermicelli to the milk.

  2. Boil for 10 minutes.

Bake

  1. Mix in the beaten egg yolks and half the egg whites.

  2. Pour the mixture into a dish.

  3. Bake for 30 minutes.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Yolks and whites thicken the custard and help the pudding set as it bakes.
Vermicelli
Provides the body of the pudding, absorbing milk and holding the structure once baked.
Milk
Forms the custard base, supplying moisture and richness for the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the milk and adds flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Mix in the beaten egg yolks and half the egg whites. Adding eggs to very hot milk can scramble them. Let the mixture cool slightly and stir the eggs in gently so the custard sets smoothly in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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