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Dessert

Nesselrode Pudding

A custard pudding with raisins, pecans, almonds, and maraschino cherries, made with milk, eggs, sugar, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Nesselrode Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Combine 3 pints of milk, 5 egg yolks, 1 cup of sugar, and 3 tablespoons of flour in a saucepan to make a boiled custard.

  2. Flavor the custard with vanilla after removing it from the heat.

  3. Add 1 pint of rich milk and the 3 beaten egg whites.

Add the fruit and nuts

  1. Cut the maraschino cherries into small pieces.

  2. Fold in 1 pound of raisins, ½ pound of pecans, ½ pound of almonds, and the chopped cherries.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pecans + almondtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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 cook with the milk.
Egg whites
Beaten whites add lightness and airy structure to the mixture.
Flour
Stabilizes the custard so it thickens smoothly and holds its body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds creaminess.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Cooking the boiled custard. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the custard overheats. Cooking gently while stirring thickens the egg and flour mixture smoothly, and the custard must be fully thickened before the beaten egg whites and fruit are folded in.

Swap the pecans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, flour, raisin, almond):

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Brazil nutfits better
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, flour, raisin, almond. 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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