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Dessert

Nesselrode Pudding

A chilled chestnut pudding with raisins, currants, candied fruit, and a splash of yellow chartreuse.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

Prepare the chestnut base

  1. Remove shells from chestnuts and peel off the skin.

  2. Place chestnuts in a saucepan with 1 pint of water and 1 pound of sugar.

  3. Boil until very soft, then press through a sieve.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chestnut puree with 1 pint of cream and 4 egg yolks.

  2. Before boiling, strain the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Add raisins, currants, and yellow chartreuse, then freeze as directed.

Finish and freeze

  1. Once frozen, mix in chopped candied apricots, green gages, citron, and cherries.

  2. Transfer to a mold, cover securely, and freeze for 2 hours.

  3. To serve, dip the mold in warm water for a few seconds and turn out the pudding.

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

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

  3. Chestnut + apricottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together56 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream base and add richness to the frozen custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the chestnut puree and helps keep the frozen texture soft.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the pudding a smooth, creamy texture.
French chestnuts
Form the main body of the pudding, providing starchy, sweet flavor and bulk.
Yellow chartreuse
Adds aromatic, herbal flavor and some alcohol that keeps the frozen texture softer.

The step that matters

Before boiling, strain the mixture through a sieve. Straining removes any remaining bits of chestnut and lumps so the custard freezes smooth. Sieving before heating also lets you catch any stray solids that would otherwise leave a grainy texture.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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