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Dessert

Pistachio Cake

A cake topped with green boiled icing flavored with almond extract and sprinkled with chopped blanched pistachios.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and pistachio 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 Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Bake and cool

  1. Bake a large silver or bride's cake in a shallow pan.

  2. Let the cake cool completely.

Ice and finish

  1. Cover the cake with boiled icing.

  2. Color the icing green with vegetable coloring and flavor it with almond extract.

  3. Sprinkle the top with finely chopped blanched pistachio nuts.

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.

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. Almond + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together693 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Almond + nutstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Silver or bride's cake
Provides the light, tender crumb that the icing and garnish sit on.
Boiled icing
Forms a soft, glossy coating that adds sweetness and moisture to the surface.
Blanched pistachio nuts
Add a crunchy texture and nutty flavor against the soft cake and icing.
Almond extract
Adds a strong aroma that gives the cake its characteristic flavor.

The step that matters

Let the cake cool completely. Icing a warm cake makes the boiled icing slide off or melt into a runny layer, because heat softens the sugar coating and the cake releases steam that loosens it. A fully cooled cake holds the icing in an even coat.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Cashew nutfits better
  2. Brazil nutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, pistachio. 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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