Skip to main content
Dessert

Pouding a LA Nesselrode

A chilled chestnut pudding made with chestnut meal, sugar, vanilla, cream, eggs, raisins, currants, candied lemon peel, and maraschino.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 35,031 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the chestnut meal

  1. Boil chestnuts and pound the boiled chestnuts.

  2. Rub the chestnut meal through a tammy.

Make the custard base

  1. In a saucepan, boil sugar in water with vanilla, then reduce the mixture by one-third.

  2. Boil cream.

  3. Mix the boiled cream with chestnut meal.

  4. Add the syrup.

  5. Add the beaten egg yolks.

  6. Heat the mixture over low heat, stirring until it nearly boils.

  7. Let it cool.

Freeze and fold in the additions

  1. Transfer the mixture to a freezing pot and freeze the mixture.

  2. Fold in whipped cream.

  3. Fold in whipped egg whites.

  4. Fold in raisins.

  5. Fold in currants.

  6. Fold in candied lemon peel.

  7. Fold in maraschino.

  8. Stir well.

  9. Freeze again.

  10. Place into a mold.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Sugar + vanillatop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together35,031 recipes

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

  2. Chestnut + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together243 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Raisin + curranttop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Chestnut + raisintop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together65 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together43,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla share little aroma chemistry, yet 35,031 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Chestnut meal
Provides the main body and nutty, starchy flavour of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set smoothly when gently heated.
Egg whites
Whipped to add air, giving the frozen pudding a lighter texture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, keeping the frozen texture smooth and creamy.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps keep the frozen dessert soft rather than icy.

The step that matters

Heating the egg yolk custard. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but overheating can curdle them. Stir over low heat only until the mixture nearly boils, so it becomes smooth and thick rather than grainy.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

  1. Figbetter flavor fit
  2. Raspberrybetter flavor fit
  3. Strawberrybetter flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chestnut, sugar, vanilla, cream, egg, raisin, currant. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Illustration of Lemon CakeIllustrationLemon Cake228 recipesIllustration of Lemon IceIllustrationLemon Ice147 recipesIllustration of Vanilla Ice CreamIllustrationVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesIllustration of Lemon SherbetIllustrationLemon Sherbet103 recipes