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Dessert

Nesselrode Pudding

A chilled dessert made from blended almonds, chestnuts, pineapple, candied fruit, cream, and egg yolks, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and chestnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 130 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Nesselrode Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the nuts

  1. Boil the chestnuts for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the black skins from the chestnuts.

  3. Pound the chestnut kernels into a paste.

  4. Blanch the almonds.

  5. Pound the almonds in the same manner.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, boil the sugar, water, and pineapple together for 20 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and stir them into the syrup.

  3. Set the saucepan in another pan with boiling water and beat the mixture until it thickens.

  4. Remove from heat and place in a basin of cold water.

  5. Beat the mixture for 10 minutes.

Combine and freeze

  1. Mix the almonds and chestnuts with the cream.

  2. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Add the candied fruit and pineapple to the mixture.

  4. Stir this mixture into the cooked preparation.

  5. Add the vanilla and salt.

  6. Freeze like ice cream.

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. Almond + chestnuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together130 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Chestnut + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together244 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness through emulsifying fat and protein as they set gently.
Chestnuts
Provide starchy body and a soft, paste-like texture once boiled and pounded.
Almonds
Add nutty flavor and a fine, pounded texture to the base.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the frozen dessert a smooth, creamy mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps keep the frozen texture soft rather than icy.
Pineapple
Adds fruity acidity and moisture to the syrup and the final mixture.

The step that matters

Beating the custard while it thickens. Egg yolks set gently over hot water; if the heat is too high they can scramble. Beating keeps the custard smooth and evenly thickened, and cooling it promptly stops further cooking.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, chestnut, cream, egg, vanilla, wine, sugar):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, chestnut, cream, egg, vanilla, wine, sugar. 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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