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Vermicelli Pudding, Boiled

A boiled pudding made from vermicelli, milk, eggs, and sweetened with sugar, lemon, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Vermicelli Pudding, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Make the vermicelli base

  1. Combine vermicelli and milk in a saucepan. Bring to a gentle boil, stirring constantly until tender and thickened, about 10 to 15 minutes.

  2. Pour the mixture into a bowl, let it cool, then sweeten and flavor with lemon, nutmeg, and a pinch of salt.

  3. Gradually stir in the beaten eggs.

Prepare the mold

  1. Grease a mold with butter and decorate the inside with raisins.

  2. Gently pour the vermicelli mixture into the mold without disturbing the raisins. Fill the mold completely.

  3. Cover the top with a round of buttered paper, tie it securely in a floured cloth.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the mold in a pot of fast‑boiling water and boil for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, moving it occasionally for the first 15 minutes. Add more boiling water as needed to keep it covered.

  2. After cooking, let the pudding stand for 4 minutes before unmolding onto a hot dish. Serve with sweet sauce 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard-like pudding as they cook, giving it structure and a firm texture.
Vermicelli
Provides the body of the pudding, thickening with milk as it simmers.
Milk
Cooks with the vermicelli to create a soft, tender base that holds the pudding together.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the beaten eggs. Adding eggs to a hot mixture too quickly can scramble them. Cooling the base first and adding the eggs slowly keeps the mixture smooth and evenly set.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Orangefits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

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