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Vermicelli Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon 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

Prepare

  1. Boil the milk with lemon peel and cinnamon.

  2. Sweeten with loaf sugar and strain through a sieve.

  3. Add the vermicelli and boil for 10 minutes.

Set and cook

  1. Mix in the egg yolks and egg whites until well combined.

  2. Steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes or bake for 30 minutes.

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 + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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

Eggs
Egg yolks and whites bind the pudding and help it set as it cooks.
Vermicelli
Starch from the pasta thickens the milk and gives the pudding its body.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the pasta softens in and the custard sets from.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the milk and eggs.

The step that matters

Mix in the egg yolks and egg whites until well combined. Eggs set when heated, so they must be fully blended into the warm milk and vermicelli to avoid streaks or uneven setting in the finished pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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