Home › Recipes › Baked Vermicelli Pudding
Baked Vermicelli Pudding
The quality of vermicelli varies so much that no rule will serve for all the sorts. Vermicelli ought to be parboiled and drained before being used for this purpose. Some, however, will dissolve to a paste as soon as hot water touches it.
The same ingredients and proportions named for macaroni pudding serve for vermicelli.
Boil a small piece of stick cinnamon in the milk in lieu of other flavoring. Break the vermicelli rather small before cooking. Do not stir it except by shaking up with a fork. Always drop both vermicelli and macaroni into milk or water that is boiling already.
Italian paste puddings, like everything else may have their day, but other pieces can be put upon the boards which will have a much more extensive run, especially when presented in a spirited manner, like the following with brandy or wine sauce.
This is a variation entry rather than a standalone formula: it borrows the custard and proportions from the book's macaroni pudding and only tells you what to do differently. A few notes on translating it to a modern kitchen and modern pasta.
- You need the macaroni pudding firstThe ingredients and quantities are not repeated here. Find the book's macaroni pudding recipe and use its proportions, substituting broken vermicelli for the macaroni.
- The hinge: parboil and drainEverything in this entry turns on getting the vermicelli partly cooked and drained before it meets the custard. Undercooked strands drink the milk and leave a dry pudding; overcooked ones collapse into paste and you lose the texture that justifies the dish.
- Modern vermicelli is more predictableThe warning that quality "varies so much" presumably reflects inconsistency between suppliers of the day. Dried durum semolina vermicelli today is consistent; two to three minutes in boiling water, well short of the package time, is enough before draining.
- Do not confuse it with rice vermicelliIn this period vermicelli means the fine wheat pasta, not the rice noodle sold under the same name in Asian groceries. Rice vermicelli softens far too quickly for this treatment.
- Shaking, not stirringThe instruction against stirring is about not breaking the strands into mush. Lift and shake the pan with a fork; the same applies when you fold the drained pasta into the custard.
- Stick cinnamon in the milkScald the milk with a piece of cinnamon stick, let it steep off the heat, then strain it out before making the custard. Ground cinnamon is not a substitute here; it clouds the pudding and settles.
- OvenNo temperature is given because none could be. A baked milk-and-egg pudding of this type wants a moderate oven, about 325 to 350F, until just set with a slight wobble at the centre. A water bath guards against curdling at the edges.
- Yield and servingServing -- The yield depends entirely on the macaroni pudding's proportions, which are not repeated here. The closing line recommends the recipe that follows, served with brandy or wine sauce, rather than proposing that sauce for this pudding.
Sweet baked puddings made from "Italian pastes" — macaroni, vermicelli, nouilles — were a fixture of nineteenth-century Anglo-American cookery, where imported dried pasta was put to sweet as well as savoury use. The idea is essentially rice pudding with pasta standing in for the grain: milk, eggs, sugar, a warm spice, baked until set. What makes this entry distinctive is that it is written for the trade rather than the home. The talk of a dish having "its day," of pieces put "upon the boards," of an "extensive run" and of being "presented in a spirited manner" is a sustained theatrical metaphor — the stage boards and a play's run; the author is advising a professional on what will sell, not a housewife on what to cook.