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Dessert

Pistachio Ice Cream

A frozen dessert of pistachio nuts, sugar, egg yolks, orange‑flower water, milk or cream, and spinach.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine pistachio nuts, sugar, egg yolks, orange-flower water, and milk or cream.

  2. Heat the mixture over low heat, stirring constantly until it thickens.

  3. Strain the mixture into a bowl.

Finish and freeze

  1. In a separate bowl, mix spinach and ½ pint of milk.

  2. Stir the spinach mixture into the pistachio mixture until well combined.

  3. Freeze the mixture like other ice creams.

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 + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Nuts + spinachtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Orange + spinachtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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 body of the ice cream base.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they heat and add richness to the base.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and softens the texture of the frozen ice cream.
Milk or cream
Supplies the liquid base and fat that give the ice cream its creamy texture.
Spinach
Adds the green colour that gives the ice cream its pale green tint.

The step that matters

Heat the custard gently while stirring. Egg yolks thicken at low heat, but if the mixture gets too hot or is left unstirred, the eggs can scramble and turn grainy. Constant stirring over low heat keeps the custard smooth.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pistachio, nuts, sugar, egg, milk, spinach):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pistachio, nuts, sugar, egg, milk, spinach. 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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