Skip to main content
Dessert

Nesselrode Pudding

A chilled custard pudding with chestnuts, pineapple syrup, candied fruit, raisins, and Maraschino-soaked chestnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chestnut and raisin share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 65 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Nesselrode Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Make a custard with milk, salt, sugar, and egg yolks.

  2. Strain the custard and cool.

  3. Add cream, pineapple syrup, and chestnuts.

  4. Freeze the mixture.

  5. Shell and cook chestnuts in boiling water until soft.

  6. Force the cooked chestnuts through a strainer.

Mold and pack

  1. Line a two-quart melon mold with part of the mixture.

  2. Add candied fruit, Sultana raisins, and soaked chestnuts to the remaining mixture.

  3. Fill the mold with the mixture.

  4. Cover the mold.

  5. Pack the mold in salt and ice.

  6. Let stand for two hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with whipped cream sweetened and flavored with Maraschino syrup.

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. Chestnut + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together65 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  5. Cream + syruptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 and smooth texture to the frozen mixture.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the frozen pudding a smoother, creamier texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and lowers the freezing point, keeping the frozen mixture softer.
Chestnuts
Provide starchy body and a mild, nutty flavour to the pudding.
Pineapple syrup
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour to the frozen mixture.

The step that matters

Strain the custard and cool. Straining removes any cooked bits of egg so the custard stays smooth. Cooling it fully before adding cream and freezing keeps the texture fine rather than grainy or icy.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, cream, egg, syrup, chestnut, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, cream, egg, syrup, chestnut, raisin. 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