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Nesselrode Pudding
3 cups milk 1 1/2 cups sugar Yolks 5 eggs 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 pint thin cream 1/4 cup pineapple syrup 1 1/2 cups prepared French chestnuts Make custard of first four ingredients, strain, cool, add cream, pineapple syrup, and chestnuts; then freeze. To prepare chestnuts, shell, cook in boiling water until soft, and force through a strainer. Line a two-quart melon mould with part of mixture; to remainder add one-half cup candied fruit cut in small pieces, one-quarter cup Sultana raisins, and eight chestnuts broken in pieces, first soaked several hours in Maraschino syrup. Fill mould, cover, pack in salt and ice, and let stand two hours. Serve with whipped cream, sweetened and flavored with Maraschino syrup.
A frozen chestnut custard built in a melon mould, from the era when freezing meant a crank freezer and a salt-and-ice pack. Everything here works in a modern kitchen provided you treat the custard and the moulding stage with some care.
- Cook the custard to temperature, not to timeStir the milk, sugar, yolks and salt over gentle heat until the mixture reaches 170-175F and coats a spoon. Past about 180F the yolks scramble and no amount of straining will save the texture.
- Prepared French chestnutsThis means peeled sweet chestnuts, shelled and skinned, boiled soft and sieved -- not water chestnuts and not the candied marrons glaces sold in syrup. Vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts, about 12 oz, give the 1 1/2 cups of puree without the peeling.
- Thin creamRoughly what is now sold as light cream or single cream, somewhere around 18-20 percent butterfat. Light cream, or failing that half-and-half, is the closest substitute; heavy cream will make the finished pudding richer.
- The syrupsPineapple syrup is the sweet liquid from canned pineapple. Maraschino syrup in this period may mean the liqueur or a sweetened syrup of it; it is used both to soak the eight broken chestnuts and to flavor the whipped cream served with the pudding.
- Freezing"Then freeze" assumes a hand-crank freezer. Churn the strained, chilled base in an ice-cream machine until it holds soft-serve consistency, then work quickly -- the mixture must still be spreadable to line the mould.
- Lining and packing the mouldChill a two-quart mould hard first, press a layer of the frozen mixture up the sides, fill the center with the fruited remainder, cover with foil or parchment under the lid, and freeze. The recipe allows two hours in a salt-and-ice pack; in a home freezer expect a mould this size to need longer, and judge it by firmness rather than by the clock.
- UnmouldingDip the mould in warm water for a few seconds, invert onto a cold platter, and return it to the freezer for a few minutes if the surface has softened. Let the pudding stand 10 minutes before slicing so it cuts rather than shatters.
- YieldA full two-quart mould serves twelve to sixteen in the thin slices this sort of dessert is meant for.