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Dessert

Nesselrode Pudding

A custard-based pudding with ladyfingers, cream, egg whites, candied fruit, macaroons, almonds, served with hot chocolate sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,733 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Nesselrode Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Stir the lady fingers into the hot custard.

Add the cream and fruit

  1. Whip the cream until very light and fold in the whipped egg whites until stiff.

  2. Freeze the mixture until soft, then add the candied pineapple, cherries, crushed macaroons, and chopped almonds.

  3. Stir in the half-frozen cream and freeze until hard.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a mold or small molds and serve with hot chocolate sauce.

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 + chocolatetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,733 recipes

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

  2. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pineapple + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Pineapple + chocolatetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together154 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rich custard
Forms the creamy base that holds the other ingredients together.
Lady fingers
Soak up the custard and give the dessert a soft, cake-like structure.
Rich cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture when whipped and folded in.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they lighten the mixture and help it set with a delicate texture.
Candied pineapple
Adds chewy pieces of sweetness and fruit flavor throughout the dessert.
Candied cherries
Add chewy texture, sweetness and bright fruit flavor.

The step that matters

Folding the whipped egg whites into the cream. Whites deflate easily, so fold gently and keep them stiff to preserve the light, airy texture the frozen dessert depends on.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, egg, almond, chocolate, sauce):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, almond, chocolate, sauce. 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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