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Dessert

Nesselrode Pudding

A rich pudding made with almonds, chestnuts, cream, pineapple, candied fruit, vanilla, wine, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

  1. Boil chestnuts for 30 minutes.

  2. Rub off skins.

  3. Pound chestnuts to a paste.

  4. Blanch almonds.

  5. Pound almonds in the same manner.

Make the custard

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

  2. Beat egg yolks.

  3. Stir yolks into the syrup.

  4. Place the saucepan with the mixture into another pan of hot water.

  5. Beat with an egg beater until thickened.

  6. Place in a basin of cold water.

  7. Beat for 10 minutes.

Combine and freeze

  1. Mix almonds and chestnuts with the cream.

  2. Rub through a sieve.

  3. Add candied fruit to the mixture.

  4. Add finely chopped pineapple to the mixture.

  5. Combine with the cooked mixture.

  6. Add salt and vanilla extract.

  7. Freeze like ice cream.

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. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar 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

Chestnuts
Pounded to a paste, they give the pudding its body and a dense, creamy texture.
Almonds
Pounded and sieved, they add nutty flavour and a fine, smooth texture.
Egg yolks
Thickened over hot water, they set the custard and make the frozen pudding rich.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the frozen pudding smooth and creamy rather than icy.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and lowers the freezing point, keeping the frozen pudding soft.
Candied fruit
Adds concentrated sweetness and chewy bits of fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Thickening the yolks over hot water. Egg yolks scramble if heated too fast. Gentle heat in a water bath thickens them smoothly, and beating them as they cool keeps the custard silky before it is combined and frozen.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, chestnut, cream, egg, vanilla, wine, sugar. 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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