Name: Pistachio-Nut Ice
Ingredients: ¼ pound pistachio nuts; 1 pint cream or milk; apple-green food coloring; sugar to taste

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 ↓

Pistachio-Nut Ice

Ingredients

¼ pound pistachio nuts
1 pint cream or milk
apple-green food coloring
sugar to taste

Directions

Prepare

Blanch and pound the pistachio nuts in a mortar.

Make the mixture

Add your preferred flavoring and mix with the cream or milk.
Color the mixture with a little apple-green food coloring.
Sweeten to taste and freeze the mixture.

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.

Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together425 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Pistachio + creamtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together634 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together16,478 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Pistachio + appletop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together83 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Pistachio nuts: Provide the main flavor and pale green color of the ice.
Cream or milk: Supplies fat and liquid that give the frozen ice a smooth, rich texture.
Sugar: Sweetens the mixture and softens the freezing texture for a smoother result.