Skip to main content
Dessert

Pistachio Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from pistachio and almond paste, milk, cream, sugar, lemon or vanilla, and spinach coloring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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

Make the base

  1. Blanch and beat the almonds and pistachio nuts to a smooth paste.

  2. Bring the milk and cream to a boil, then remove from heat.

  3. Stir in the nut paste, flavoring, and sugar.

  4. Add enough spinach coloring to achieve a light green color.

Freeze

  1. Let the mixture cool, then freeze.

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. Pistachio + spinachtop 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. Almond + spinachtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together352 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Lemon + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 flavor and a fine, nutty body to the ice cream.
Sweet almonds
Add body and a smooth, paste-like texture that blends into the base.
Milk and cream
Supply the fat and liquid that give the ice cream its rich, smooth texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and softens the freezing texture of the ice cream.

The step that matters

Bring the milk and cream to a boil, then remove from heat. Heating the dairy dissolves the sugar and thickens the base slightly, and removing it promptly prevents scorching and curdling. Overheating can cause a grainy or burnt flavor in the finished ice cream.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes