Skip to main content
Dessert

Nesselrode Pudding

A pudding made with vanilla ice cream, chestnuts, and mixed fruits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vanilla and chestnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 244 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Nesselrode Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ice cream

  1. Make a vanilla ice cream using rich, thick cream.

Prepare the chestnuts and combine

  1. Boil the blanched French chestnuts until tender.

  2. Mash the chestnuts through a puree sieve.

  3. Combine the mashed chestnuts with mixed fruits.

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. Vanilla + chestnuttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together244 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Cream + chestnuttop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Vanilla and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,301 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Vanilla ice cream
Adds cream, fat and sweetness, giving the pudding a smooth, rich body.
French chestnuts
Provide starchy body and a soft, mashable texture once cooked and pureed.
Mixed fruits
Add sweetness, acidity and fruity aroma that contrast with the rich chestnut purée.

The step that matters

Boil the chestnuts until tender. Chestnuts that are not fully cooked stay firm and starchy, so they will not press through the sieve into a smooth purée. Cooking them until soft lets the starches gelatinise and the flesh break down evenly.

Swap the chestnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vanilla, cream):

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Chestnutthe original
  3. Hazelnutfits about as well
  4. Macadamia nutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against vanilla, cream. 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.

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes