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Dessert

Confectioners' Nesselrode Pudding

A chestnut-based pudding mixed with cream, sugar, raisins, citron, pineapple, cherries, and set in a fruit syrup.

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

Confectioners' Nesselrode Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chestnut cream

  1. Boil the chestnuts, remove shells and skins, and mash to a pulp.

  2. Mix the chestnut pulp with an equal amount of sugar and whipped cream.

  3. Freeze the mixture like ice cream.

Make the fruit syrup

  1. In a pot, boil sugar and water until dissolved.

  2. Pick over the raisins.

  3. Dice the citron and pineapple.

  4. Add the diced fruit and candied cherries to the boiling syrup and cook for 5 minutes.

  5. Strain the syrup and save it.

Finish and serve

  1. Boil and peel 25 more chestnuts.

  2. Return the syrup to the heat, add lemon juice, and boil until large bubbles form.

  3. Test the syrup by dropping it into ice water.

  4. When the syrup hardens, dip the chestnuts in it.

  5. Place the chestnuts on an oiled dish.

  6. Once the cream is frozen, mix in the fruit.

  7. Pack the mixture in a tight mold for a second freeze.

  8. Serve the candied nuts around the pudding when ready.

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 + pineappletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together67 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  4. Chestnut + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together381 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Italian chestnuts
Provide the main bulk and mild, starchy flavour of the pudding.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture to the frozen mixture.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the chestnut mixture and softens the texture when frozen.
Candied cherries
Add sweetness and chewy texture through the frozen pudding.
Sultana or seedless raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the pudding.

The step that matters

Testing the syrup by dropping it into ice water. Sugar syrup must reach the correct concentration to set into a brittle coating when cooled. Undercooked syrup stays sticky and fails to harden around the chestnuts, while overcooked syrup turns bitter and brittle.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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