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 Ice Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pistachio paste
Blanch and peel the pistachios, then pound them into a smooth paste with rose-water.
Make the custard
Beat the egg yolks in a bowl.
Pour the boiling milk over the egg yolks and add the powdered sugar.
Stir the mixture over low heat until it begins to thicken.
Remove from heat and let it cool, then stir in the pistachio paste and spinach coloring.
Pass the mixture through a sieve, then mold and freeze.
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.
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Pistachio + spinachtop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together110 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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Pistachio + rosetop 13% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together135 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Egg + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Pistachio + milktop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together417 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the milk base into a custard and add richness and emulsifying power.
- Pistachios
- Provide the main nutty flavor and the base paste that gives the ice cream its character.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the egg yolks thicken and the mixture freezes from.
- Powdered sugar
- Adds sweetness and softens the frozen texture by lowering the freezing point.
The step that matters
Stir the mixture over low heat until it begins to thicken. Egg yolks set when overheated and can curdle into lumps. Gentle low heat thickens the custard smoothly, so the mixture must be stirred constantly and removed as soon as it coats a spoon.
Swap the spinach
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pistachio, rose, egg, milk, sugar):
- Arrowrootfits better
- Sweet potatofits about as well
- Spinachthe original
- Beetrootfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against pistachio, rose, egg, milk, sugar. 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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