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Dessert

Pistachio Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made with cream, sugar, egg yolks, whites, pistachio paste, and optional flavorings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Pistachio Ice Cream

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

  1. Blanch the pistachio nuts, then pound them into a fine paste, adding a little rose water to help.

Make the base

  1. Heat the cream and sift in the sugar, stirring until dissolved.

  2. Allow the mixture to cool, then add the pistachio paste.

  3. Color the mixture a pale green using spinach coloring if desired.

  4. Optionally, flavor with vanilla.

Freeze

  1. Freeze according to your ice cream maker's instructions.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  3. Pistachio + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

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

  4. Nuts + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Cream
Provides fat and richness, giving the ice cream a smooth, creamy body.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer and scoopable.
Egg yolks
Act as emulsifiers and thickeners, adding richness and a smooth texture.
Pistachio nuts
Supply the main nutty flavour and color to the ice cream.

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, egg, pistachio, nuts, rose, vanilla):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Spinachthe original
  4. Beetrootfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, egg, pistachio, nuts, rose, vanilla. 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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