Home › The Principles of Cookery › Vermicelli Pudding, Rich
Vermicelli Pudding, Rich
Simmer the rind of half a lemon and half an inch of stick cinnamon in a quart of milk till it is pleasantly flavoured. Strain it, let it boil, and drop into it lightly and gradually four ounces of fresh vermicelli. Stir constantly, and boil gently for twenty minutes. Turn it into a bowl, and stir into it a slice of fresh butter, a table-spoonful of thick cream, and sugar to sweeten it sufficiently. Beat, first separately and afterwards together, the yolks of six eggs and the whites of three. Stir them into the pudding, pour it into a thickly-buttered piedish, and bake in a gentle oven. Serve with powdered sugar sifted thickly over it, and with wine sauce as an accompaniment. Instead of wine sauce, jam or fresh stewed fruit may be sent to table with it. Time to bake the pudding, about an hour. Probable cost, 1s. 4d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A Victorian milk pudding built on pasta rather than rice or semolina. Nothing here is difficult, but a few of the terms and quantities need translating.
- "Gentle oven"Around 300-325F (150-160C). The pudding is essentially a baked custard thickened with starch, and anything hotter will curdle the eggs and weep. An hour at that temperature is about right for a dish 2 inches deep; it is done when the centre is just set with a slight wobble.
- The quart of milkAn imperial quart is 40 fl oz, about 1.1 litres, not the 32 fl oz US quart. Whole milk, since the recipe leans on richness.
- VermicelliThe dried wheat pasta sold in coils or bundles, not rice vermicelli, which behaves quite differently in milk. "Fresh" here most likely means newly bought rather than stale and dusty, rather than fresh-made pasta. Break the strands into short lengths before dropping them in or you will be serving a tangle.
- Twenty minutes is not too longIt looks excessive for pasta, but the point is to cook the starch out into the milk so the pudding sets creamy rather than watery. Stir often; vermicelli catches on the bottom of the pan readily once the milk thickens.
- A slice of fresh butterRoughly an ounce, 25-30 g. "Fresh" means unsalted, as against the heavily salted keeping butter of the period.
- Cool before the eggsThe instruction to turn the mixture into a bowl is doing real work. Let it drop below scalding before beating in the eggs, or the yolks will scramble in the hot starch.
- Six yolks to three whitesThe uneven ratio is deliberate: the extra yolks enrich and the reduced whites keep it from setting rubbery. Keep the proportion rather than rounding to three whole eggs.
- SugarThe original leaves it open. About 3 oz (75 g) suits modern palates for this volume; the sifted sugar on top and the accompanying jam or fruit add more.
- Wine sauceA period sweet sauce of sherry or madeira thickened with butter and sugar, sometimes with an egg yolk. Stewed fruit, as the recipe allows, is the easier and lighter option.
- YieldFive or six, as stated, baked in a pie dish generous enough to hold the full quart of milk plus the swollen vermicelli and eggs.
Vermicelli reached British kitchens as an Italian import long before pasta was eaten here in savoury form, and for most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was treated as a starch for soups and, as here, for milk puddings, standing alongside rice, sago, tapioca and semolina in the long list of nursery and family sweets that fill books of this kind. Cassell's marks this one "rich" to distinguish it from a plainer version; the six yolks, the cream and the wine sauce move it toward the dinner table. The costing of 1s. 4d. and the note on how many it serves are typical of Cassell's, which was written for households keeping close accounts and wanting to know before they started what a dish would come to.