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Dessert

Nesselrode Pudding

A chilled pudding of almonds, chestnuts, candied fruit, pineapple, cream, egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and chestnut 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 nuts and fruit

  1. Boil the chestnuts for 30 minutes, then remove the black skins.

  2. Chop the almonds, chestnuts, and candied fruit finely.

Make the syrup and custard

  1. Boil the water, sugar, and pineapple for 20 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and slowly stir them into the syrup, beating until it thickens.

Finish and freeze

  1. Let it cool, then add the cream, pineapple, nuts, candied fruit, and vanilla.

  2. 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. Almond + chestnuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together130 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the syrup into a smooth custard base and add richness.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the frozen pudding a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and lowers the freezing point, keeping the frozen texture soft.
Chestnuts
Add body and a starchy, nutty texture to the frozen mixture.
Blanched almonds
Add crunch and a toasty nutty flavour to the frozen mixture.

The step that matters

Beating the egg yolks into the hot syrup. Adding hot syrup to yolks too quickly can scramble them. Pouring slowly while beating keeps the yolks smooth, so the mixture thickens into a even custard.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, chestnut, cream, egg, 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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