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Dessert

Vermicelli Pudding

A steamed pudding made with vermicelli, suet, milk, eggs, sugar, orange marmalade, and flavored with ratafia, sherry, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding base

  1. Combine chopped beef suet, milk, and vermicelli in a saucepan.

  2. Stir over heat until boiling.

  3. Boil the mixture for 5 minutes.

  4. Transfer to a basin and let cool.

  5. Stir in sugar, orange marmalade, beaten eggs, and ratafia.

Steam the pudding

  1. Brush a mold with warmed butter.

  2. Pour in the mixture.

  3. Cover with buttered paper.

  4. Place the mold in a saucepan with boiling water up to 3/4 of its height.

  5. Steam for 2 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Warm butter. Beat with caster sugar until creamy.

  2. Gradually stir in boiling water.

  3. Heat over a slow fire until just boiling. Remove from heat.

  4. Mix in sherry and grated nutmeg.

  5. Turn the pudding out of the mold. Pour the sauce around it. Serve.

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. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Orange + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, sliceable pudding when steamed.
Beef suet
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a moist, tender texture.
Vermicelli
Forms the body of the pudding, absorbing milk to create a soft, starchy base.
Milk
Softens the vermicelli and adds moisture for a tender, custard-like crumb.
Butter
Greases the mold for easy release and enriches the sauce with fat and smoothness.
Sherry
Adds aromatic flavor and acidity to the warm sauce.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. The water in the pan must stay at a steady simmer and not reach the mold's rim. Too little water lets the pudding dry out, and too much can seep under the cover and make it soggy. Gentle, even heat lets the eggs set evenly without curdling.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, milk, sugar, egg, butter, sherry, nutmeg. 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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