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Dessert

Pistachio Cream

A chilled pistachio gelatin cream made with whipped cream, pistachios, sugar, gelatin, and green coloring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch, skin, and finely chop the pistachios.

  2. Dissolve the gelatin and sugar in 3 tablespoons of water.

Make the cream

  1. Whip the cream until stiff.

  2. Add the cooled gelatin mixture to the whipped cream.

  3. Fold in the chopped pistachios.

  4. Add sap-green coloring drop by drop until the desired color is achieved.

Set

  1. Pour into a decorated mold and refrigerate until firmly set.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cream + pistachiotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together634 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Cream + nutstop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Pistachio + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Whipped into a stiff foam that gives the dessert its light, creamy body.
Pistachio nuts
Add nutty flavor and a fine crunch against the smooth cream.
Gelatine
Sets the cream when chilled, so it holds its shape when unmolded.
Caster sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves into the gelatin mixture before it is combined.

The step that matters

Adding the gelatin to the whipped cream. The gelatin mixture must be cooled but still liquid. If it is too warm it melts the cream's fat and collapses the whipped foam, and if it is too cold it sets in lumps before it can be evenly folded in.

Swap the nuts

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, pistachio, sugar. 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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