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Pistachio Soup

A spinach-based soup flavored with pistachios, almond paste, butter, and arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and pistachio 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Wash the spinach.

  2. Clean the spinach.

  3. Sprinkle the spinach with salt.

  4. Wilt the spinach in a hot saucepan.

  5. Drain the spinach.

  6. Chop the spinach finely.

  7. Pound the spinach to a paste.

Make the soup

  1. In a double boiler, boil 1 quart of water for 20 minutes with the almond paste and pounded pistachio nuts.

  2. Add the spinach, butter, and arrowroot moistened with a little water.

  3. Press the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Season with salt and paprika.

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. Almond + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together693 recipes

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

  2. Pistachio + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Almond + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Spinach + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together110 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the body and green color of the soup, and gives its vegetal flavor.
Pistachio nuts
Add nutty flavor and richness, and give the soup a fine texture when pounded.
Almond paste
Adds sweetness and a nutty aroma that complements the pistachios.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Arrowroot
Thickens the soup as its starch gels when heated in the liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the arrowroot. Arrowroot should be moistened with a little water first so it disperses without clumping. Its starch thickens only when heated, so it needs to go into the hot soup and stay hot long enough to set.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, almond, pistachio, butter, arrowroot):

  1. Cashew nutfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, almond, pistachio, butter, arrowroot. 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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