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Dessert

Vermicelli Pudding

A sweet pudding made with milk, vermicelli, lemon rind, cinnamon, eggs, nutmeg, butter, brandy, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Vermicelli Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Bring 1 pint of milk to a boil in a saucepan.

  2. Add 2 ounces of vermicelli, the lemon rind, and cinnamon tied in a cloth.

  3. Simmer gently until the vermicelli absorbs at least half the milk.

  4. Whisk 3 eggs until frothy, then add them to the mixture along with 1/4 teaspoon of grated nutmeg, 1 ounce of butter, and sugar to taste.

  5. Remove the spice bag.

Cook and serve

  1. Either boil in a mold for 30 minutes or bake in a dish.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the pudding and bind it into a custard-like texture when cooked.
Vermicelli
Absorbs the milk and forms the body of the pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the vermicelli soaks up and the eggs set in.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, softer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Whisking the eggs into the hot mixture. Adding eggs to a hot mixture without tempering can scramble them. Whisking the eggs until frothy and combining them evenly helps the pudding set smooth rather than lumpy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, egg, nutmeg, butter, brandy, sugar. 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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