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Dessert

Pistachio Ice Cream

A green ice cream made with cream, spinach, pistachios, sugar, vanilla and almond extracts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Pistachio Ice Cream

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 ↓

Pistachio Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Wash the spinach.

  2. Boil the spinach in a kettle of boiling water for 3 minutes.

  3. Drain the spinach in a colander.

  4. Pound the spinach until it becomes a pulp.

  5. Squeeze out the juice using a fine muslin cloth.

Prepare the pistachios

  1. Blanch the pistachio nuts.

  2. Pound the pistachio nuts.

Make the base

  1. Scald half of the cream with the sugar in a double boiler until the sugar dissolves.

  2. Remove the mixture from heat.

  3. Once the cream is cold, add the pistachio nuts, vanilla extract, almond extract, and the remaining cream.

  4. Mix well.

  5. Pour in enough spinach juice to color the mixture a light green.

Freeze and rest

  1. Freeze the mixture.

  2. Let it sit for 2 to 3 hours before serving.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  4. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Spinach + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together352 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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 texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers its freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer when frozen.
Pistachio nuts
Supply the main nutty flavor and a fine texture in the finished ice cream.
Spinach
Adds a light green color to the mixture; its juice contributes little flavor here.

Swap the spinach

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

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

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