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Dessert

Nesselrode Pudding

A chilled custard pudding with nuts, 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 and stir until it thickens.

  4. Pour the mixture into a basin.

  5. Stir in the sugar and crushed Savoy biscuits.

  6. Let the mixture cool completely.

Add the whites and freeze

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

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

  3. Pour the mixture into an ice cream maker.

  4. Freeze the mixture.

  5. When the mixture is half frozen, stir in the pounded almonds, chopped pistachios, chopped cherries, and cleaned currants.

  6. Fold in the whipped cream.

  7. Finish freezing.

Shape and store

  1. Pack the pudding into shapes.

  2. Store in the freezer 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. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

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 when heated and add richness to the base.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the frozen mixture and give it airy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.
Heavy cream
Adds fat and richness, giving a smoother, creamier frozen texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and lowers the freezing point, keeping it soft.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until it thickens. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat. Overheating can scramble them into lumps, while underheating leaves the base thin and unstable for freezing.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Lemonthe 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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