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Pistachio Cream Ice

A pistachio-based ice cream flavored with lemon rind and colored green.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 Cream Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the pistachio nuts.

  2. Pound the blanched nuts in a mortar with the lemon rind and sugar until smooth.

Make the custard

  1. Gradually add the milk and mix well.

  2. Work in the egg yolks.

  3. Once cold, strain the custard through a fine sieve.

Finish and freeze

  1. Color the mixture a pretty pale green.

  2. Fold in the whipped cream.

  3. 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.

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

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

  4. Pistachio + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

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

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

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

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 nutty flavor and a fine, slightly rich texture once pounded smooth.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the frozen texture by lowering the freezing point.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavors and sets the custard body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsify the mixture, giving the custard a smooth, creamy body.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and air, making the frozen ice cream light and creamy rather than icy.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped cream. Fold gently so the air trapped in the whipped cream is kept. Stirring vigorously deflates it, leaving a denser, less light ice cream after freezing.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Cashew nutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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