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Pistachio Prawlings

A candied pistachio confection made by boiling sugar to soft ball stage and mixing with pistachios.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and pistachio 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 ↓

Pistachio Prawlings

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 240°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar with a little water.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reaches the soft ball stage (about 240°F or 115°C).

Coat the pistachios

  1. Add the pistachios to the sugar mixture.

  2. Remove the pan from the heat and work the pistachios into the sugar as directed for almonds.

  3. Finish as instructed in the previous recipe.

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. Sugar + pistachiotop 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

Sugar
Sweetens and, once boiled to the soft ball stage, sets into a coating around the nuts.
Pistachios
Provides the main nut flavor and crunchy bulk that the cooked sugar holds together.

The step that matters

Boiling to the soft ball stage. The sugar's concentration sets the final texture. Stopping too early leaves the coating sticky, while going too far makes it hard and brittle.

“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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