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Dessert

Pistachio Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made with cream, sugar, egg, vanilla, almond extract, and green vegetable coloring.

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

Why it works: Vanilla and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Pistachio Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Beat the egg in a bowl.

  2. Add sugar, cream, vanilla, and almond extract to the egg and mix well.

Colour and freeze

  1. Dissolve a small amount of green vegetable coloring in a little cream and add it to the mixture.

  2. Stir until well combined and 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. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Vanilla and sugar 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 for a rich, smooth texture and a creamy mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen ice cream softer by lowering its freezing point.
Egg
Adds richness and helps the base hold together as it is mixed and frozen.
Vanilla extract
Adds aroma and a rounded flavour to the base.
Almond extract
Adds a strong aromatic flavour that comes through in the finished ice cream.

The step that matters

Dissolve the green colouring in cream first. Colouring that is added as granules or in a concentrated lump does not disperse evenly and can leave streaks or specks. Dissolving it in a little cream before adding it lets the colour spread through the whole base.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Hazelnutfits about as well
  4. Macadamia nutfits less well

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