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Dessert

Vermicelli Pudding

A sweet pudding made with milk, vermicelli, sugar, butter, eggs, and almonds, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 vermicelli base

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until scalding.

  2. Add a pinch of salt.

  3. Cook the vermicelli in the milk for about 10 minutes until tender.

  4. Stir in the sugar and butter while the mixture is warm.

  5. Let the mixture cool completely.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add the beaten egg yolks and chopped almonds, then mix well.

  2. Gently fold in the whipped egg whites until combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and cover.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

  5. Uncover and brown the top.

Serve

  1. Serve warm with a liquid sauce.

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

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

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they lighten the pudding and help it rise and set with air.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard, adding richness and helping it set as it bakes.
Vermicelli
Cooked in milk until tender, it forms the body of the pudding.
Milk
Cooks the vermicelli and forms the custard base that sets during baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the pasta's texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, tender texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped egg whites trap air that gives lift. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air in the mixture so the pudding stays light instead of deflating into a dense layer.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Cocoafits less well
  4. Walnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, butter, 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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