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Dessert

Boiled Vermicelli Pudding

A steamed pudding made from vermicelli, custard, milk, eggs, vanilla, and sugar, topped with dried cherries and pistachios.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Boiled Vermicelli Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the vermicelli in ½ pint of milk until soft.

  2. Sweeten the mixture slightly.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix with ½ pint of milk, vanilla, and castor sugar.

  2. Pour the custard over the vermicelli and stir well.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a well‑greased mold.

  2. Steam for about 1 hour or until set.

  3. Carefully turn out and decorate with dried cherries and chopped pistachio nuts.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Forms the starchy body of the pudding, giving it bulk and a soft, sliceable texture.
Eggs
Set during steaming to bind the custard and hold the pudding together.
Milk
Cooks the vermicelli until soft and forms the liquid base of the custard.

The step that matters

Steam until set. Egg proteins coagulate as they heat, so the pudding firms gradually. Undercooking leaves it runny and hard to turn out, while overcooking can make it grainy or spongy.

“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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