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Nesselrode Pudding
Peel two dozen Spanish chestnuts. Put them into boiling water for five minutes, then take off the second skin, and boil them until tender with half a stick of vanilla and half the thin rind of a fresh lemon in the water with them. Drain them well, and pound them in a mortar. Press them through a hair-sieve, and mix with them a quarter of a pound of powdered sugar, a glass of maraschino, and half a pint of thick cream. Dissolve three-quarters of an ounce of best isinglass in a little water, stir it into half a pint of hot cream, add the chestnuts, etc., and keep stirring the mixture gently until it is sufficiently stiff to hold the fruit without letting it fall to the bottom. Work in two ounces of picked and dried currants, and two ounces of candied citron cut into thin strips. Put the mixture into an oiled mould, and set in a cool place to stiffen. Time, about three-quarters of hour to boil the chestnuts. Probable cost, 3s. Sufficient for eight or nine persons. NETTLE. The common nettle is one of a tribe of plants which includes the fig, the hop, and others employed as food. Nettles are used as an article of diet in some parts of the country. They are wholesome, and almost medicinal in their properties.
A set chestnut cream rather than the frozen Nesselrode most cooks know, and it succeeds or fails on one point: the gelatine mixture must be stirred until it begins to thicken before the fruit goes in, or the currants and citron will sink into a band at the bottom of the mould.
- IsinglassIsinglass is a gelatine made from fish swim bladders and it sets more softly than modern gelatine, so three-quarters of an ounce here is not a straight swap. Around half an ounce (about 14-15 g, roughly five teaspoons of powdered gelatine or seven leaves) will give a comparable set for a pint of cream, but the exchange rate is approximate and worth testing on a small amount first.
- Imperial half-pintsA British half-pint is 10 fl oz, so the recipe uses about 1¼ cups of cream twice over, 2½ cups in total. Bloom the gelatine in cold water, then dissolve it in the hot cream off the heat rather than boiling it.
- "A glass of maraschino"Unspecified, and glasses varied; in cookery of this period a "glass" is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, which is a sensible reading here, though liqueur glasses proper were smaller. Modern maraschino is drier and more almond-scented than the sweet syrup sold under the name for cherries, which is not a substitute.
- Spanish chestnutsThe large sweet chestnut, Castanea sativa. Two dozen is roughly a pound in the shell. Vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts work well and skip the five-minute blanch and the peeling of the inner skin, though they still want simmering with the vanilla pod and lemon rind to pick up the flavour.
- Pounding and sievingA hair sieve was a fine horsehair mesh; a drum sieve, tamis or fine-mesh strainer does the same job. A food processor will purée the chestnuts but still leaves grit, so push the purée through a sieve afterwards for the smooth texture the dish depends on.
- Currants and citron"Picked" means gone over by hand for stalks and grit. Dried currants are the small black Zante sort, not fresh redcurrants. Soaking both fruits in a little of the maraschino for half an hour keeps them from drying out the set cream.
- The mouldBrush with a flavourless oil, not butter, which sets hard and drags. Chill at least four hours, preferably overnight; "a cool place" meant a larder, and a refrigerator is faster and safer for a dairy custard. To turn out, dip the mould briefly in warm water.
- Stray textThe paragraph beginning NETTLE is the start of the dictionary's next headword and has nothing to do with the pudding.
Nesselrode pudding is generally traced to Count Karl von Nesselrode, the Russian foreign minister who served through the first half of the nineteenth century, and traditionally credited to his chef; the version that made the name famous was an iced custard heavy with chestnut purée, dried fruit steeped in maraschino, and candied peel, moulded and frozen. By the time Cassell's was compiling its dictionary the name appears to have loosened towards chestnut-and-dried-fruit sweets in that idiom, which is what appears here: a gelatine-set cream that needs only a cold larder rather than an ice cave and a freezing pot. Chestnuts, cheap and filling in southern Europe, were in Britain more often met as a purée or a stuffing ingredient, and pairing them with maraschino and candied citron placed the dish among the imported grand sweets of the dinner-party repertoire.