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Dessert

Vermicelli Pudding

A sweet pudding made with vermicelli, milk, cinnamon, lemon peel, sugar, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and lemon 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

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.

Cook the vermicelli

  1. Wash the vermicelli.

  2. Boil the vermicelli in milk with cinnamon and lemon peel for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool slightly, then take out the cinnamon and lemon peel.

  4. Sweeten to taste.

Bake and serve

  1. Add the egg yolks and egg whites, and mix well.

  2. Pour into a buttered dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  3. Alternatively, boil for 1.5 hours and serve with 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. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Vermicelli
Starch that softens in the milk and gives the pudding its body.
Milk
Liquid that cooks with the vermicelli and forms the creamy base.
Egg yolks
Fats and emulsifiers that give the pudding a rich, silky texture.
Egg whites
Proteins that set when baked, giving the pudding structure and lift.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the milk and eggs.

The step that matters

Let the milk mixture cool before adding the eggs. Eggs thicken and scramble when they meet very hot liquid. Cooling the mixture slightly lets the yolks and whites blend smoothly into a uniform, set custard.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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