Skip to main content
Dessert

Pistachio Bomb

A chilled pistachio cream dessert with raisins and a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Pistachio Bomb

Ingredients

Directions

Build the bomb

  1. Line a brick ice cream mold or a baking powder can with Pistachio Cream, covering the bottom and sides about 1 inch deep.

  2. Fill the hollow center with whipped cream, adding a few drops of cochineal for color.

  3. Soak the raisins in orange juice overnight. Drain the raisins.

  4. Fold the raisins into the whipped cream.

  5. Cover with more Pistachio Cream, overfilling the mold to create a seal.

Freeze and unmould

  1. Pack the mold in salt and ice for 2 hours to harden.

  2. Dip the mold in warm water.

  3. Turn the contents out onto a platter.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil ½ pint of water with ½ pound of sugar for 10 minutes until thick.

  2. Cool the sauce on ice.

  3. Add the juice of 1 lemon and ½ pint of grape juice to the sauce when cold.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Pistachio + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

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

  3. Orange + grapetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Pistachio + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pistachio cream
Forms the outer shell and carries the nutty pistachio flavor around the filling.
Whipped cream
Forms the light, airy filling that freezes into a soft, creamy texture.
Seedless raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness within the whipped cream filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, boiled with water, thickens it into a syrup.
Grape juice
Adds fruity flavor and color to the sauce.

The step that matters

Overfill the mold before the final cover. Overfilling the mold with Pistachio Cream creates a seal so the filling stays enclosed and keeps its shape as it freezes and is unmoulded.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pistachio, raisin, orange, cream, sugar, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pistachio, raisin, orange, cream, sugar, lemon. 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

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes