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Dessert

Pistachio Ice

A frozen dessert made from pistachios, Jordan almonds, lemon juice, sugar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Pistachio Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the nuts

  1. Blanch and pound the pistachios and Jordan almonds in a mortar until fine.

Make and freeze the mixture

  1. Add the juice of one lemon and the sugar to the mixture.

  2. Stir in the cream and pass through a sieve.

  3. Freeze the mixture until solid.

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 + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together693 recipes

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

  2. Pistachio + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 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. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Pistachios
Provide the main nutty flavour and pale green colour of the ice cream.
Jordan almonds
Add a sweet almond flavour and extra body to the nut base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer.
Cream
Adds fat that makes the ice cream rich and smooth by limiting ice crystals.

The step that matters

Pass the mixture through a sieve. Sieving removes coarse nut fragments that would otherwise leave a gritty texture. A smooth base also freezes into a finer, creamier ice cream with fewer large ice crystals.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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