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Dessert

Vermicelli Pudding

A sweet pudding made with milk, vermicelli, sugar, butter, eggs, lemon rind, and brandy, baked and topped with clarified butter and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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. Bring 1½ pints of milk to a boil.

  2. Add 4 ounces of fresh vermicelli and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring gently until thick.

  3. Mix in 3½ ounces of sugar, 2 ounces of butter, and ¼ teaspoon of coarse sea salt until well blended.

  4. Beat the mixture for a couple of minutes to cool it slightly.

  5. Gradually add 5 well‑whisked eggs and the grated rind of 1 lemon.

Bake and serve

  1. Just before baking, stir in ⅓ cup of brandy.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350 °F (175 °C) for 30 to 45 minutes.

  3. Top with clarified butter and sift sugar over it before serving.

  4. Optionally, add candied peel or pounded bitter almonds for flavor.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  5. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the pudding when baked and add richness and structure to the custard.
Vermicelli
Thickens the hot milk as it simmers, giving the pudding its body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the vermicelli thickens and the eggs set.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its browning on the surface.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Cooling the mixture before adding the eggs. Eggs added to very hot milk can scramble instead of blending smoothly. Beating the mixture to cool it slightly lets the whisked eggs thicken it evenly as it bakes.

“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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