Name: Nesselrode Pudding
Ingredients: 1 cup rich, thick cream; 1 cup blanched French chestnuts; 1 cup mixed candied fruits, cut in small pieces; 2 tablespoons maraschino, sherry, or orange juice

Why it works: Chestnut and sherry work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 87 recipes. Both carry ethyl pentanoate, which smells yeast, fruit. The science ↓

Nesselrode Pudding

Ingredients

1 cup rich, thick cream
1 cup blanched French chestnuts
1 cup mixed candied fruits, cut in small pieces
2 tablespoons maraschino, sherry, or orange juice

Directions

Make the ice cream

Make vanilla ice cream using the rich, thick cream.

Prepare the chestnuts and fruit

Boil the blanched French chestnuts until tender.
Mash the boiled chestnuts through a puree sieve.
Moisten the mashed chestnuts with the mixed candied fruits and the maraschino, sherry, or orange juice.

Finish and serve

Stir the fruit mixture into the frozen ice cream.
Let the pudding stand for one hour before serving.

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.

Chestnut + sherrytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together87 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).
Cream + chestnuttop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together643 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Cream + sherrytop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,038 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Rich, thick cream: Forms the creamy base of the ice cream, giving it richness and a smooth texture.
French chestnuts: Add body and a starchy, mealy texture that thickens the pudding.
Mixed candied fruits: Add sweetness and chewy bits of fruit throughout the pudding.
Maraschino, sherry, or orange juice: Adds aromatic flavour and acidity that balances the sweetness of the fruit.