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Dessert

Vermicelli Pudding

A sweet custard made with milk, vermicelli, sugar, butter, eggs, lemon rind, and brandy, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

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.

Make the vermicelli base

  1. Bring 1½ pints of milk to a boil.

  2. Add 4 ounces of fresh vermicelli and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring gently until thick.

  3. Mix in 3½ ounces of sugar, 2 ounces of butter, and ¼ teaspoon of salt until well blended.

  4. Beat the mixture for a couple of minutes to cool it slightly.

Finish and bake

  1. Gradually add 5 well‑whisked eggs and the grated rind of 1 lemon.

  2. Just before baking, stir in ⅓ cup of brandy.

  3. Pour into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 to 45 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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and add richness and structure as the pudding bakes.
Fresh vermicelli
Thickens the milk as it simmers and gives the pudding its body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the vermicelli softens in and the eggs set into.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the pudding's texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender crumb.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs gradually. Adding hot egg mixture too fast can scramble the eggs, leaving lumps instead of a smooth custard. Whisked eggs blended in slowly, with the base cooled slightly, stay even and set evenly in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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