Skip to main content

Nougat Baskets

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pistachio and nuts match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Nougat Baskets

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Take a small piece of nougat and flatten it on a slab or dish with a well-oiled palette knife.

  2. Press the nougat into a mould, trim the edges, and let it set quickly.

  3. Fill small moulds for pedestals with nougat and smooth the bottoms on the slab.

  4. Once set, loosen the baskets from the moulds and cool on a pastry rack.

  5. Boil sugar to the crack stage, dip the bottoms of the baskets, and attach them to the pedestals.

  6. Fill a small piping bag with royal icing and pipe around the edges of the baskets.

  7. Finely shred blanched pistachio nuts and stick them in the icing.

  8. Fill a large piping bag with whipped cream and fill the baskets.

  9. Decorate with glazed fresh fruits and serve on a dish with fancy paper beneath.

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

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Pistachio + grapetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together182 recipes

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

  4. Pistachio + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together634 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Nuts + grapetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together224 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

Swap the grape

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pistachio, nuts, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like

Pistachio Ice CreamPistachio Ice Cream36 recipesGrape SherbetGrape Sherbet32 recipesGrapefruit MarmaladeGrapefruit Marmalade16 recipesGrape ButterGrape Butter9 recipes