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Dessert

Vermicelli Pudding

A pudding made from vermicelli, milk, cream, butter, sugar, cinnamon, and egg yolks, baked or steamed.

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 moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding base

  1. Boil the vermicelli in the milk with the piece of cinnamon until thick.

  2. Pour the mixture into a basin and stir in the butter, sugar, and cream.

  3. When cool, add the beaten egg yolks.

Bake or steam

  1. Bake in a buttered dish or steam in a buttered basin for 1 hour.

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. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon 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
Thickens the milk as it boils and gives the pudding its body.
Egg yolks
Set the pudding when heated, giving it a rich, custard-like firmness.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the pudding.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, silkier mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its soft texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Yolks must be added only once the mixture has cooled slightly. Hot mixture can scramble the eggs, leaving bits of cooked yolk instead of a smooth, set pudding.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  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, egg, butter, 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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