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Dessert

Vermicelli Pudding

A sweet pudding made from vermicelli, milk, cream, butter, sugar, eggs, and flavored with lemon rind, bitter almond essence, or vanilla.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the vermicelli in the milk until tender.

  2. Stir in the butter, sugar, and eggs.

  3. Flavor the mixture with grated lemon rind, essence of bitter almonds, or vanilla.

  4. Omit the cream if it is not available.

Bake

  1. Butter a pie dish and line the edges with puff pastry.

  2. Pour the pudding mixture into the dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Vermicelli
Cooked in milk until tender, it forms the body of the pudding.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding into a firm, sliceable custard.
Butter
Adds richness and a soft, tender texture to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the vermicelli and forms the custard base.

The step that matters

Bake until just set. Eggs set as they heat, so overbaking can make the pudding curdled, dry, or rubbery. Pull it from the oven once the centre barely wobbles and let carryover heat finish it.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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