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Pistachio Ice Cream

A pistachio ice cream flavored with orange flower water and spinach greening.

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

Prepare the pistachios

  1. Scald, peel, and finely pound the pistachio nuts with the orange flower water.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk and stir it into the beaten eggs and sugar.

  2. Heat the mixture for a few minutes until it thickens, then strain into a bowl.

  3. Add the pistachio mixture and let it cool.

  4. Once cool, mix in the cream and spinach greening.

Freeze

  1. Pour into a freezer and freeze 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the custard base on gentle heating and add richness and structure.
Cream
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture and softer freezing.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point for a softer scoop.
Pistachio nuts
Provide the main nutty flavour and color of the ice cream.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard along with the eggs.

The step that matters

Heating the custard until it thickens. Heat thickens the egg proteins, but overheating can scramble the eggs into lumps. Heat gently and stir, then strain to remove any set bits.

Swap the orange

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

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

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