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Vermicelli, Portuguese
Break lightly three ounces of vermicelli. Soak it in water for an hour, drain it, and put it into a saucepan with a pint of milk and an inch of stick vanilla, or a little lemon-rind. Let it simmer gently for an hour and a quarter. Take out the flavouring ingredient, stir into it three additional table-spoonfuls of milk, and sweeten to taste. Simmer twenty minutes longer. Let it cool a little, then stir into it four well-beaten eggs. Beat it over the fire till it is on the point of boiling, draw it back, and add a small wine-glassful of thick cream and another of brandy. When wanted, put it into a glass dish, and keep it in a cool place till it is to be served. A few minutes before it is wanted, crush three-macaroons to powder, and sprinkle the dust thus obtained over the vermicelli. Time, four hours. Probable cost, 1s. 4d., exclusive of the brandy. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A stirred milk-and-egg custard thickened with fine pasta, served cold under crushed macaroons. The hinge is the egg stage: once the eggs go in, the pan must never reach a boil or the custard granulates.
- The egg stage"Beat it over the fire till it is on the point of boiling" means bring it to about 175-180F over low heat, stirring constantly, and pull it off. Temper the beaten eggs with a ladleful of the hot vermicelli mixture first, and strain the finished custard if it shows any specks.
- Vermicelli, not rice noodlesThis is wheat vermicelli, the fine Italian sort sold in nests or short lengths. Rice vermicelli will dissolve to nothing. Three ounces is about 85g.
- Skip the soak, cut the simmeringThe hour in water and the hour and a quarter of simmering may suit the pasta of the period, but modern extruded vermicelli goes to glue long before that; 15-20 minutes of gentle simmering in the milk gives the soft, porridge-like body intended.
- Milk and vesselAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, about 2.5 cups. Use a heavy-based saucepan and stir often, as pasta settles and scorches. If the milk reduces too far while the pasta softens, add more; the mixture should be loose enough to pour.
- A wine-glassfulReckon roughly 2 fl oz (60ml) each of cream and brandy. Both go in off the heat, after the custard has thickened, so the alcohol is not cooked off.
- The macaroonsVictorian macaroons were crisp almond biscuits, not coconut mounds or French macarons. Amaretti, crushed to a coarse powder, are the closest thing; sprinkle only at the last minute or they soften.
- FlavouringAn inch of vanilla pod, split, or a wide strip of lemon rind with no pith. Both are removed before sweetening. The recipe gives no sugar quantity, only "sweeten to taste".
- Yield and timingFive or six small glass dishes or one bowl. The stated four hours covers the hour's soak, about an hour and three-quarters of simmering, and cooling; with the shortened simmer the active work is about 40 minutes, plus several hours cold before serving.
The dish resembles aletria doce, the sweet vermicelli pudding eaten at Christmas in Portugal, where fine pasta is simmered in milk, enriched with egg yolks and served cold in a shallow dish, usually dusted with cinnamon rather than macaroon crumbs. This version is anglicised by way of the vanilla pod, brandy and crushed almond biscuits, and by folding in whole beaten eggs instead of yolks alone. Its presence in a Victorian British dictionary of cookery reflects both the long commercial and dynastic traffic between Britain and Portugal and the period's fondness for what it filed under "foreign" milk puddings, a category that also absorbed Italian pasta into the sweet course without much comment. Vermicelli appears in British kitchens largely as a soup garnish and a pudding thickener before savoury pasta dishes became familiar.