Name: Ditto, with Pistachios
Ingredients: ¼ pound blanched pistachios; 1 ounce preserved citron; 8 bitter almonds; 6 ½ cups nearly boiling milk; 10 ounces powdered sugar; 1 tablespoon spinach juice; 1 egg; 10 yolks; ¼ teaspoon salt

Why it works: Pistachio and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Ditto, with Pistachios

Ingredients

Directions

Pound the pistachios with the preserved citron and bitter almonds.
Infuse the mixture in nearly boiling milk, then cover and let it cool to lukewarm.
Squeeze the infusion through a napkin.
In a bowl, combine the powdered sugar, spinach juice, egg, yolks, and salt.
Gradually add the milk infusion to the mixture and stir well.
Pass the mixture through a tammy and finish your cream as before.

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 + almondtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together693 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Pistachio + spinachtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together110 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Almond + spinachtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together352 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Almond + milktop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,800 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,679 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

Swap the spinach

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

Arrowrootfits better
Beetrootfits about as well
Sweet potatofits about as well
Spinachthe original

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