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Dessert

Nesselrode Pudding

A chilled dessert made with chopped fruit, brandy or rum, vanilla ice cream, and a pinch of coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 911 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Nesselrode Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Finely chop the French Maroons and cherries.

  2. Finely chop the French pineapple and seedless raisins.

Make the pudding

  1. Mix all chopped ingredients in a bowl and add enough brandy or rum to form a paste.

  2. Fold the mixture into the vanilla ice cream.

  3. When packing, use only a little coarse sea salt to ensure the Nesselrode is not too hard when served.

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. Pineapple + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together911 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Brandy + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Raisin + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Pineapple + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Vanilla ice cream
Forms the creamy, frozen base that the fruit is folded into.
Brandy or rum
Softens the fruit mixture into a paste and keeps it from freezing rock hard.
French maroons
Provides chewy, sweet pieces of candied chestnut for texture and flavor.
Seedless raisins
Adds chewiness and concentrated sweetness to the mixture.

The step that matters

Packing with coarse sea salt. Alcohol and sugar lower the freezing point, so the fruit stays soft, while too much salt can make the pudding unpleasantly hard or uneven when frozen. Using only a little keeps the texture right.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, brandy, 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.

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