Skip to main content
Dessert

Vermicelli Pudding with Apples or Without

A baked pudding made from vermicelli, milk, butter, sugar, lemon zest, and optional apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Vermicelli Pudding with Apples or Without

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Boil the vermicelli in the milk for about 30 minutes.

  3. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar together. Add the lemon zest to the butter mixture.

Combine and bake

  1. Combine the cooked vermicelli with the butter mixture.

  2. If desired, fold in preserved fruit or smooth apple marmalade.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until golden brown.

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. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Vermicelli
Forms the body of the pudding as it cooks and absorbs the milk.
Milk
Cooks the vermicelli soft and forms the custard-like base of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the baked pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Baking until golden brown. Baking too briefly leaves the pudding loose and pale, while over-baking dries it out. Watch for an even golden top as the signal that it is set and browned.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, sugar, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, lemon. 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

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes