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Dessert

Vermicelli Pudding

A sweet pudding made with vermicelli, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, brandy, and spices, baked with a puff pastry rim.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Vermicelli Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard base

  1. In a saucepan, combine vermicelli, cinnamon, lemon rind, nutmeg, and milk.

  2. Boil until the vermicelli absorbs more than half the milk.

  3. In a bowl, beat the eggs with a fork, then add to the mixture along with butter, sugar, and brandy.

  4. Remove the cinnamon, lemon rind, and nutmeg before baking.

Bake

  1. Place a rim of puff pastry around the edge of your dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Vermicelli
Starch that absorbs milk and thickens the pudding as it cooks.
Milk
Liquid base that the vermicelli absorbs and the eggs set into a custard.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding into a soft, sliceable custard.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, softer texture.

The step that matters

Boil until the vermicelli absorbs more than half the milk. The vermicelli must soften and absorb much of the milk before the eggs are added. Adding eggs to a hot, unabsorbed mixture risks uneven setting and a grainy texture in the baked pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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