Why it works: Filbert and nuts work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 38 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Filbert and Wine Iced Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the wine cream
Combine 1 pint of cream, 4 tablespoons of sugar, and ⅔ cup of fine sherry in a bowl.
Ensure the cream is sweet and ice cold, at least 24 hours old.
Whip the cream until solid, then freeze it.
Prepare the filberts
Roast 1 pint of filberts in a cool oven until the skins can be rubbed off.
Rub the nuts in cloths to remove the brown coating.
Pound the filberts with a little thick cream to make a paste.
Mix the paste with 4 ounces of sugar and enough thick custard to create a very thick batter.
Flavor with lemon or vanilla if desired, then freeze.
Assemble and pack
Line a plain mold with the frozen wine cream, about 1 inch thick.
Fill the center with the frozen filbert mixture, pressing it in tightly.
Cover the mold and pack it in ice and salt for 3 hours or until ready to serve.
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.
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Filbert + nutstop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together38 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Cream + filberttop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
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Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,273 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
- Cream
- Whipped and frozen to form the rich, smooth body of the pudding.
- Filberts
- Provide the main nutty flavor and, once pounded, the dense filling texture.
- Fine sherry
- Adds wine flavor and acidity while lowering the freezing point for a softer texture.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cream and softens the freeze for a smoother, scoopable result.
- Thick custard
- Binds the ground nuts into a thick batter with a creamy, cohesive texture.
The step that matters
Whip the cream until solid, then freeze it. Cream must be well whipped and very cold so it holds air and sets firm. Under-whipped cream freezes dense and icy, and the layered mold may not hold its shape.
Swap the lemon
The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, sherry, filbert, nuts):
- Vanillafits better
- Pineapplefits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, sherry, filbert, nuts. 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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