Skip to main content
Dessert

Nesselrode Pudding

A chilled pudding made from French Cooked Ice Cream mix, nuts, candied cherries, raisins, citron, crystallized ginger, and maraschino flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and hazelnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 186 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Nesselrode Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Take 4 gallons of French Cooked Ice Cream mix and add enough Carameline to achieve a light brown tint.

  2. Partially freeze the mixture.

  3. Boil ½ pint of large chestnuts in water until tender. Remove shells and outer skins, then press through a colander.

Prepare the fruit and nuts

  1. Chop 2 pounds of candied cherries, 2 pounds of seedless raisins, ¼ pound of citron, and ¼ pound of crystallized ginger finely. Add enough water to cover the fruits and boil slowly until tender.

  2. Grind the English walnut meats, hazelnut meats, and blanched almonds using a fine plate in a grinder. If unavailable, chop finely in a wooden bowl.

  3. Mix the ground nut meats with the cooked fruits thoroughly. Add 1 ounce of imitation maraschino flavoring to the mixture.

Combine and freeze

  1. Combine the fruit-and-nut mixture with the partially frozen ice cream mix and churn until uniformly mixed.

  2. Freeze until very hard.

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 + hazelnuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together186 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Chestnut + hazelnuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chestnut + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together130 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Walnut + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

French cooked ice cream mix
Forms the creamy, frozen base that carries all the other ingredients.
Candied cherries
Add sweetness, chewy texture and bright colour to the frozen dessert.
Seedless raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness through the frozen base.
English walnut meats
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour that contrasts with the smooth base.
Blanched almonds
Add crunch and a mild, nutty flavour to the frozen mixture.
Hazelnut meats
Add crunch and a rich, roasted nutty flavour to the frozen mixture.

The step that matters

Churn the fruit-and-nut mixture into the partially frozen base. Combining at the partly frozen stage keeps the added solids evenly distributed; if the base is too liquid they sink, and if too firm they will not blend in smoothly.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, chestnut, raisin, walnut, meat, almond, hazelnut):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, chestnut, raisin, walnut, meat, almond, hazelnut. 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

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesSoft Ginger CakeSoft Ginger Cake56 recipes