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Dessert

Nesselrode Pudding

A chilled pudding made from blanched almonds, chestnuts, cream, pineapple juice, egg yolks, candied fruit, vanilla, sugar, water, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 base

  1. Blanch and pound the almonds and chestnuts into a paste.

Make the custard

  1. In a pot, boil the sugar, water, and pineapple juice for 20 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and stir them into the boiling mixture.

  3. Place the pot in boiling water and beat until thickened.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a bowl in cold water and beat for 10 minutes.

  5. Mix in the cream and strain through a sieve.

Finish and freeze

  1. Add the finely chopped candied fruit and pineapple, and mix well.

  2. Stir in the salt and vanilla extract.

  3. Freeze the mixture 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 as they set when gently heated.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the frozen result a smooth, creamy texture.
Almonds
Add body and nutty flavour to the base once pounded into a paste.
Chestnuts
Add starchy body and a mild, sweet flavour to the paste.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point, keeping the frozen texture softer.

The step that matters

Beating the custard over boiling water until thickened. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat. Overheating them can curdle the custard, so it must be stirred steadily and kept below a hard boil.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

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