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Pistachio Ice Cream

A green pistachio and almond ice cream made with spinach juice or vegetable coloring, glucose, sugar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Pistachio Ice Cream

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 ↓

Pistachio Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Combine pounded pistachios and pounded almonds in a bowl.

  2. Add spinach juice or vegetable coloring to achieve a green color.

  3. Mix in glucose and sugar until well combined.

  4. Fold in the cream gently.

Freeze

  1. Freeze the mixture until solid.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pistachio + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together693 recipes

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

  2. Pistachio + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together110 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Almond + spinachtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together352 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Pistachio + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together634 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Pistachios
Provides the main nutty pistachio flavor and a fine, grainy body.
Almonds
Adds nutty richness and body to the base.
Glucose
Keeps the frozen ice cream softer and smoother by limiting large ice crystals.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point so the ice cream stays scoopable.
Cream
Supplies fat that makes the ice cream rich and creamy.

The step that matters

Fold in the cream gently. Gentle folding keeps air trapped in the cream so the frozen result is light rather than dense. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, producing a denser, heavier texture.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Beetrootfits about as well
  3. Spinachthe original
  4. Kalefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pistachio, almond, sugar, cream. 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.

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