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Dessert

Nesselrode Pudding

A custard pudding made with raisins, currants, candied fruit, nuts, milk, egg yolks, cream, and macaroons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 558 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Nesselrode Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and nuts

  1. Seed the raisins and wash the currants the day before serving.

  2. Chop the candied citron, ginger, pineapple, and any other candied fruit.

  3. Pour the Maraschino cordial over the fruit and let it soak overnight.

  4. Blanch the chestnuts or almonds in boiling water.

  5. Dry the blanched nuts in the oven.

  6. Once cool, pulverize the nuts with the sugar and vanilla bean in a mortar.

  7. Sift the pulverized mixture through a fine sieve.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, bring the milk to a boil.

  2. Beat the egg yolks until light.

  3. Mix the sugar, nuts, and vanilla into the beaten yolks.

  4. Stir the mixture into the boiling milk and let it thicken.

  5. Strain the thickened mixture through a fine sieve.

  6. When cool, place the mixture in a freezer and freeze partially.

Finish and freeze

  1. Whip the thick cream.

  2. Stir the whipped cream into the custard along with the soaked fruit and crushed macaroons or meringues.

  3. Freeze everything together until firm.

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. Peach + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together558 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  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. Pineapple + peachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together168 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Raisin + chestnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together65 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 with the hot milk.
Cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture when whipped into the frozen custard.
Candied fruit
Provides chewy texture and concentrated sweetness, softened by the soaking liquor.
Nuts
Add body and a toasty, nutty flavour to the custard base.
Macaroons or meringues
Add crisp, sweet pieces that contrast with the smooth frozen custard.

The step that matters

Stirring the yolks into the boiling milk. Hot milk can scramble egg yolks if added carelessly. Stir the yolk mixture gradually into the hot milk and cook gently so it thickens smoothly into custard rather than curdling.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, ginger, pineapple, peach, chestnut, sugar, vanilla. 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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