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Pistachio Cream Ice

A chilled pistachio custard folded with whipped cream.

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

Make the custard

  1. Blanch pistachio nuts and pound them in a mortar with lemon rind and sugar until smooth.

  2. Gradually add milk and mix well, then work in egg yolks.

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

Finish and freeze

  1. Color mixture pale green, fold in whipped cream, and 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 flavor and the pale green color of the ice cream base.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness, giving the frozen ice a smooth, creamy texture.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and air, making the frozen texture lighter and creamier.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and softens the texture of the frozen ice.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the egg yolks thicken into custard.

The step that matters

Work in egg yolks gradually and cool the custard before straining. Adding egg yolks to hot or unevenly mixed liquid can scramble them into lumps. Letting the custard cool before straining removes any small bits and leaves a smooth base for 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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