Name: Chocolate Harlequin Pistachios
Ingredients: chocolate; sugar; pistachios; harlequin-coloured nonpareils

Why it works: Chocolate and pistachio work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 209 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Chocolate Harlequin Pistachios

Ingredients

chocolate
sugar
pistachios
harlequin-coloured nonpareils

Directions

Warm a small metal mortar.
Pound the required quantity of chocolate with sugar in the mortar.
Take a nut-sized piece of the chocolate paste and place a pistachio in it.
Shape it into an olive form by shaking it in your hand.
Coat the shaped chocolate in harlequin-coloured nonpareils.
Repeat with the remaining pistachios.

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.

Chocolate + pistachiotop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together209 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,404 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + pistachiotop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,233 recipes

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