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Dessert

Brooklyn Pistachio Cream

A chilled pistachio cream made with pistachio paste, rose water, sweet cream, sugar, and almond extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Brooklyn Pistachio Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pistachio paste

  1. Scald the pistachio nuts and remove the skins.

  2. Pound the nuts in a glass or marble mortar, adding rose water gradually.

  3. In a bowl, mix the sweet cream with the loaf sugar until dissolved.

  4. Gradually mix in the pistachio paste.

Cook and freeze

  1. Transfer the mixture to a porcelain saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Pour the mixture into a freezer, add almond extract, and freeze until firm.

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

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

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

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

  3. Nuts + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Rose + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pistachio nuts
Provide the main flavour and green colour, and form the body of the paste.
Rose water
Adds a floral aroma and keeps the nut paste moist while pounding.
Sweet cream
Supplies fat and liquid that give the cream its richness and smooth texture.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cream and helps it freeze to a softer, smoother texture.

The step that matters

Bringing the mixture to a boil. Boiling the cream and sugar mixture can scorch or curdle the dairy if left unattended, and it should be stirred and watched closely. Cooling it fully before freezing keeps the final texture smooth.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Cashew nutfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Brazil nutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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