Why it works: Chestnut and almond 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 ingredients
Shell the chestnuts and remove the brown skin.
Place the chestnuts in a saucepan, cover with boiling water, and boil for 20 minutes.
Press the chestnuts through a colander.
Shell, blanch, and pound the almonds.
Cut the candied fruit into small pieces.
Make the custard base
Boil the water and sugar together for 15 minutes.
Beat the egg yolks until very light.
Add the beaten yolks to the boiling syrup.
Stir over the heat until it boils, then remove from heat.
Beat the mixture until cold.
Mix, freeze and ripen
Add the fruit, cream, almonds, chestnuts, vanilla, and sherry, and mix well.
Transfer the mixture to a freezer and freeze.
After freezing, drain off the water.
Add more salt and ice.
Cover with a piece of carpet, and let it ripen for several hours.
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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Chestnut + almondtop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together130 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Pineapple + vanillatop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together911 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
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Chestnut + vanillatop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together244 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together3,961 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Pineapple + sherrytop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together228 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Chestnuts
- Give the pudding its main body and soft, starchy texture after being pressed smooth.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the pudding and, boiled into a syrup, helps give it a smooth, set texture.
- Almonds
- Add nutty flavour and a fine, slightly rich texture when pounded.
- Cream
- Adds fat and richness, making the frozen mixture smoother and creamier.
- Sherry
- Adds a fragrant, aromatic flavour to the pudding.
The step that matters
Stirring the yolks into the boiling syrup. Egg yolks thicken gently when heated and stirred, but they can scramble into lumps if they meet very hot liquid too fast or are left unstirred. Keep stirring so the custard turns smooth.
Swap the pineapple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chestnut, sugar, almond, cream, vanilla, sherry):
- Figfits better
- Apricotfits better
- Peachfits about as well
- Pineapplethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against chestnut, sugar, almond, cream, vanilla, sherry. 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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