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Dessert

Nesselrode Pudding

A custard pudding with chestnuts, candied fruit, raisins, pineapple syrup, and Maraschino-soaked chestnuts, chilled and served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chestnut and raisin share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 65 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Nesselrode Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Combine milk, sugar, egg yolks, and salt in a saucepan to make a custard.

  2. Cook until thickened, then strain and cool.

  3. Add cream and pineapple syrup to the cooled custard and chill.

Prepare the chestnuts

  1. Shell and cook chestnuts in boiling water until soft, then force through a strainer.

Assemble and freeze

  1. Line a 2-quart melon mold with part of the custard mixture.

  2. To the remaining custard, add candied fruit, Sultana raisins, and chestnuts soaked in Maraschino syrup.

  3. Fill the mold with the mixture, cover, and pack in salt and ice.

  4. Let stand for 2 hours before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve with whipped cream sweetened and flavored with Maraschino syrup.

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. Chestnut + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together65 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Pineapple + chestnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together67 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  5. Cream + syruptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 as they set during cooking.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and lowers its freezing point for a softer frozen texture.
Thin cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the frozen pudding a smoother, creamier texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.
French chestnuts
Add body, starchy texture and a nutty flavour to the mixture.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until thickened. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but overheating can make them curdle and turn grainy. Cook gently and stop once the custard coats a spoon, then strain to remove any lumps.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, egg, cream, syrup, chestnut, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, egg, cream, syrup, chestnut, raisin. 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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