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Dessert

Nougat De Pistaches

A sweet confection made from pistachios and powdered sugar, formed into strips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,233 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Nougat De Pistaches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pistachios

  1. Remove the shells from the pistachios.

  2. Cut each pistachio in half, then cut each half into thirds.

  3. Dry the pistachios well.

  4. Weigh the pistachios.

Make the nougat

  1. In a saucepan, combine half the weight of the pistachios with powdered sugar.

  2. Heat the pistachios.

  3. Place the saucepan over heat and melt the sugar with a spatula.

  4. Mix the pistachios into the melted sugar.

  5. Stir the mixture briefly over heat.

  6. Pour the mixture onto a lightly oiled marble surface.

  7. Spread the mixture out on the surface.

  8. Gather the pistachios and sugar with a knife.

  9. Roll the mixture out to about ¾ inch thick.

Cut and store

  1. Cut the mixture into 2-inch wide strips.

  2. Cut the strips into pieces ¾ inch long while still hot.

  3. Store in a dry place.

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 + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Pistachios
Form the bulk of the nougat and give it its nutty flavor and crunchy texture.
Powdered sugar
Melts into a syrup that binds the pistachios together and sets as the candy cools.

The step that matters

Cutting the mixture while still hot. Sugar mixtures harden as they cool, so the strips and pieces must be cut while the nougat is still warm and pliable, or they will crack and shatter.

“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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