Name: Pistachio Tablets
Ingredients: ½ pound pistachio kernels; 2 pounds sugar; juice of spinach

Why it works: Pistachio and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 110 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Pistachio Tablets

Ingredients

½ pound pistachio kernels
2 pounds sugar
juice of spinach

Directions

Boil pistachio kernels in water until skins come off.
Remove from heat, cool in cold water, and strip off skins.
Pound the kernels finely in a clean marble mortar with spinach juice to color them green.
Proceed to make tablets as per other recipes.

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.

Pistachio + spinachtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together110 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Pistachio + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,233 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Sugar + spinachtop 32% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,033 recipes

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