Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Harlequin Pistachios

A chocolate-coated pistachio confection made by pounding pistachios with cocoa and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nuts and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Chocolate Harlequin Pistachios

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Warm the mortar and pestle by placing them on a stove or using hot ashes.

  2. Wipe the mortar clean and add the prepared nuts.

Make the paste

  1. Pound the nuts until they form an oily paste.

  2. Add the powdered sugar to the chocolate paste in the ratio of 3:4 (sugar to cocoa).

  3. Continue to pound until fully combined.

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. Nuts + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Nuts + cocoatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together65 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  4. Pistachio + cocoatop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Nuts + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 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
Pounded until oily, they form the paste that carries the nutty flavour and binds the mixture.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and fine texture, and helps dry the paste so it holds together.
Cocoa
Provides the chocolate flavour and body of the mixture.

The step that matters

Pound the nuts until they form an oily paste. Pounding breaks the nut cells and releases their oils, which turn the nuts into a smooth paste. Stopping early leaves a grainy texture that does not hold together well.

Swap the cocoa

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (nuts, pistachio, sugar):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Brazil nutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nuts, pistachio, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Pistachio Ice CreamPistachio Ice Cream36 recipesCoconut PuddingCoconut Pudding26 recipesCoconut CakeCoconut Cake17 recipesCocoa Nut CandyCocoa Nut Candy11 recipes