Skip to main content
Dessert

A Vermicelli Pudding

A sweet pudding made with vermicelli, milk, cinnamon, cream, butter, sugar, and egg yolks, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

A 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 with the cinnamon until soft.

  2. Stir in the heavy cream, butter, sugar, and beaten egg yolks.

  3. Pour the mixture into an earthen dish without a crust.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) 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. 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 + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Softens in the hot milk and forms the body of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set, giving the pudding a rich, sliceable texture.
Heavy cream
Adds fat and richness, making the custard smoother and more tender.
Butter
Contributes fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel in the baked custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and contributes to browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Bake in a moderate oven. Egg yolks set through gentle heat; too hot an oven can curdle or toughen the custard, leaving it grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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.

More vermicelli pudding recipes

Apple 4Baked 3 See all 107 →

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes