Skip to main content
Dessert

Nesselrode Pudding

A fruit and chestnut pudding made with milk, egg yolks, candied fruit, figs, chestnuts, cream, sugar, water, and sweet wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pineapple and fig match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 100 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Nesselrode Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the components

  1. Soak the candied fruit in sweet wine for 2-3 hours.

  2. Cook the chopped figs in a syrup made of sugar and water until thick.

  3. Boil the chestnuts, then strain them through a vegetable strainer.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Pour the hot milk over the lightly beaten egg yolks and stir.

  3. Return the mixture to the heat and cook until it coats the back of a spoon.

Combine and freeze

  1. Combine all ingredients and freeze the mixture.

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. Pineapple + figtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Fig + chestnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  3. Milk + figtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Pineapple + chestnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together67 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

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 gently with heat.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and carries its creamy body.
Cream
Adds fat and softness, giving the frozen dessert a smoother texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and helps keep the frozen texture softer.
Chestnuts
Provide starchy body and a nutty flavor that bulks out the dessert.
Candied fruit
Adds concentrated sweetness and chewy pieces through the frozen mixture.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until it coats the back of a spoon. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but overheating can scramble them into lumps. Stop cooking once the custard coats a spoon so it stays smooth before freezing.

Swap the chestnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, pineapple, fig, cream, sugar, wine):

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Chestnutthe original
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Pistachiofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, pineapple, fig, cream, sugar, wine. 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.

You might also like

Pineapple SherbetPineapple Sherbet116 recipesPineapple PuddingPineapple Pudding72 recipesPineapple CreamPineapple Cream58 recipesPineapple JellyPineapple Jelly39 recipes