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Dessert

Nesselrode Pudding

A chilled custard pudding with almonds, pistachios, cherries, currants, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Nesselrode Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Pour the boiled milk over the egg yolks.

  3. Return the mixture to the heat.

  4. Stir the mixture until the custard thickens.

  5. Pour the mixture into a basin.

  6. Stir in the sugar and crushed Savoy biscuits.

  7. Let the mixture cool completely.

Freeze and fold

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Fold the stiff egg whites into the cooled mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a freezer to freeze.

  4. When the mixture is half frozen, stir in the pounded almonds, chopped pistachio nuts, chopped cherries, and cleaned currants.

  5. Fold in the whipped cream.

  6. Finish freezing the mixture.

Shape and store

  1. Pack the mixture into pudding shapes.

  2. Store the shaped puddings in an ice box until ready to serve.

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 + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Biscuit + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Biscuit + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 enrich its flavour and colour as they cook with the milk.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiffness, they lighten the frozen mixture with air for a softer texture.
Heavy cream
Folded in whipped, it adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the frozen dessert.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps keep the frozen mixture from freezing rock-hard.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard that the yolks thicken.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until it thickens. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but if overheated they can curdle and turn grainy. Stirring gently and watching for the custard to coat a spoon keeps it smooth before cooling.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, biscuit, vanilla, almond, cream, pistachio):

  1. Hazelnutfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, biscuit, vanilla, almond, cream, pistachio. 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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