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Walnut or Filbert Iced Pudding

A frozen pudding made with walnut or filbert paste, custard, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Walnut or Filbert Iced Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the nut cream

  1. Pound the walnuts or filberts to a paste.

  2. Mix the nut paste with a little cream and ½ cup sugar.

  3. Prepare a thick custard flavored with lemon or vanilla.

  4. Combine the custard with the nut paste and freeze.

Line and fill the mold

  1. Line a plain mold with the frozen plain cream.

  2. Fill the center with the frozen nut cream and cover tightly.

Freeze

  1. Pack the mold in ice for 3 hours.

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

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

  2. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Walnut + creamtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Sugar + walnuttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Walnuts or filberts
Provide fat and a rich, nutty flavor that gives the frozen filling body.
Cream
Adds fat that keeps the frozen filling smooth and creamy rather than icy.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, so the frozen filling stays softer.
Custard (in the method)
Thickens the mixture with a smooth, rich base that holds the nut paste together.

The step that matters

Combine the custard with the nut paste and freeze. The custard and nut paste must be fully cooled and well blended before freezing. Mixing warm ingredients or leaving lumps can cause uneven setting and a grainy texture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, walnut, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, walnut, cream. 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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