A theme of the Lyttelton/Hart-Davis letters is R H-D’s prodigious appetite for reading and eating. Not surprisingly, he is writing around 1960, the best meals are abroad.
After a rough channel crossing and a large brandy and soda he has “a delicious lunch on the Paris train. Altogether I ate five huge meals (four on trains and one at Rapello), each of five courses and a half-bottle of wine. … A superb dinner (soup, a trout cooked with almonds, chicken, cheese and ice-cream) … The lunch was Italian – shellfish (assorted), ravioli, fritto misto of local fish (so good that I had a second helping), excellent cheese and a fine chestnut pudding. Local wines, white and red. … A last delicious lunch on the Calais train, a smooth crossing, tea in the London train.”
A crossing to New York on the RMS Queen Mary is an opportunity for more gluttony. “We consumed oysters (melon for R), turtle soup, skipped the fish, excellent tender fillet steaks, and a deliciously light American pudding called Nesselrode Pie. … Last night we had oysters (smoked salmon for Ruth), delicious poached turbot cooked with mussels and shrimps, the breasts of ducklings done with cherries, and a marrons-glacées ice, washed down by some excellent Montrachet.”
On the same trans-Atlantic crossing he writes that “I have so far read three thrillers, the proofs of Margaret Lane’s new book about Africa, Vita Sackville-West’s new novel, and The Bachelors by Muriel Spark. The new Ian Fleming is disappointingly like a feeble parody of the earlier ones.”
(The books are A Calabash of Diamonds, by Margaret Lane, No Signposts in the Sea by Vita Sackville-West and Thunderball by Ian Fleming.)
Nesselrode Pie was created by Monsieur Mouy, head chef to Count Nesselrode. Who he?
For forty years, Nesselrode guided Russian policy and was a leading European conservative statesman of the Holy Alliance. Between 1845 and 1856, he served as Chancellor of the Russian Empire. As Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1824, he was a plenipotentiary during negotiations with the United States in defining the boundary between Russian America and the American claims known as the Oregon Country, which was resolved with the Russo-American treaty of 1824, and a parallel treaty with Britain concerning British claims which overlapped on those of the US. A century later in 1924, Mount Nesselrode in the Boundary Ranges of the Alaska-British Colombia boundary was named for him. (Wiki)
The not-always omniscient Wiki omits to mention his eponymous pie. “It consists of cream-enriched custard mixed with chestnut puree, candied fruits, currants, raisins and maraschino liqueur. This elegant mixture is often frozen, or made into a pie or dessert sauce. Other dishes named after the Count include a game soup and a braised sweetbread dish, but none gained the same fame as the Nesselrode pudding.” (mollypaul)
Many thanks for digging so deeply into the rather obscure origins of Nesselrode Pie , an American dessert (not a “pudding”!) which fell out of fashion after World War II. I am including a link from a 1988
NYTimes article, http://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/07/garden/de-gustibus-the-culinary-mystery-of-nesselrode-pie.html, which contains a recipe for those inclined to challenge their culinary skills as well experience the delights of chestnut puree.
The shortest recipe is in Jane Grigson’s “Good Things” first published in 1971. It is on p.349 of the Penguin edition & I have made it a few times over the years. Her instructions are, as always, easy to follow and accompanied by the history of the dish. But we in England would definitely call it an ice cream and not a pie.