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VERMICELLI (au lait)
Boil a quart of milk, and drop lightly into it six ounces of vermicelli which has been blanched in boiling water to free it from all impurities. Simmer gently, and stir frequently to keep it from getting into lumps. When tender, sweeten it and send it to table. Time to boil the vermicelli, fifteen to twenty-five minutes.
A sweet milk-and-pasta dish of the same family as rice pudding, and it stands or falls on how you manage the milk. Cassell's timing was written for thicker, coarser vermicelli than anything sold now.
- The hinge: milk scorchesSix ounces of pasta in a quart of milk means the starch thickens the liquid quickly and the bottom of the pan will catch. Use a heavy-bottomed pan over low heat and keep the spoon moving along the base, not just through the middle.
- Quart and ouncesQuant and ounces -- An English (imperial) quart is 40 fl oz, about 4.8 US cups; 6 oz of vermicelli is roughly 170 g. If you use a US quart (32 fl oz) expect a stiffer result, closer to a spoonable pudding.
- What vermicelli meantA fine wheat-flour pasta, sold in coiled nests or long threads. Rice vermicelli is a different product entirely and will collapse in hot milk. Break the nests up before dropping them in.
- TimingFifteen to twenty-five minutes will reduce modern dried vermicelli to paste. Start tasting at four minutes and expect it tender in five to eight, allowing that it keeps softening off the heat.
- The blanching stepNineteenth-century pasta was often dusty or flour-coated, which is presumably what the recipe means by 'impurities', so a preliminary plunge in boiling water was sensible. With clean packaged pasta it is optional, though a brief blanch still rinses off loose starch and keeps the milk from turning gluey.
- SweeteningNo quantity is given. Two to three tablespoons of sugar for a quart of milk is a reasonable start, stirred in at the end so it does not encourage catching. A pinch of salt makes the milk taste of more.
- Flavour, if wantedSome period recipes infuse the milk before the pasta goes in: a strip of lemon peel, a piece of cinnamon or a split vanilla pod, strained out before serving. Grated nutmeg over the top at table was a common finish. Cassell's calls for none of it.
- Yield and servingServes four as a light supper dish or pudding. Send it hot in a deep dish.
Vermicelli reached English kitchens in the eighteenth century as an Italian import, and early cookbooks used it chiefly as a garnish for clear soups; by the time Cassell's was compiled it was cheap enough to boil in milk by the ounce. The name means "little worms" in Italian, a description of the threads rather than a compliment. Dressing a starch in sweetened milk was a standard economical pudding of the period, and vermicelli sat alongside rice, sago, tapioca and macaroni in many Victorian manuals, all treated as ways of thickening a quart of milk into a family dessert.