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Pistachio Butter

A butter made by blending pistachios with butter and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and butter work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 587 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Pistachio Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Blanch and peel

  1. Put pistachios into boiling water.

  2. Keep on the side of the fire until the peel can be easily removed.

  3. Drain pistachios.

  4. Cool pistachios in cold water.

  5. Clean pistachios.

Make the butter

  1. Finely pound pistachios while moistening with water.

  2. Add butter.

  3. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

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. Pistachio + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together587 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Pistachios
Provide the main flavour and body of the butter once pounded into a paste.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer texture in the finished paste.

The step that matters

Finely pound pistachios while moistening with water. Pounding breaks down the nut cells and releases oils, so a fine, smooth paste forms. Adding water a little at a time keeps the mixture from heating and turning oily or grainy.

“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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