Name: Pistachio Diplomatic Pudding
Ingredients: ¼ pound blanched pistachios, finely chopped; ½ pint clear jelly; custard (see recipe No. 452); ¼ pound finely chopped almonds; 1 glass noyeau; cold sauce (see recipe No. 702)

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 Diplomatic Pudding

Ingredients

¼ pound blanched pistachios, finely chopped
½ pint clear jelly
custard (see recipe No. 452)
¼ pound finely chopped almonds
1 glass noyeau
cold sauce (see recipe No. 702)

Directions

Prepare the mold

Mix the finely chopped pistachios with the clear jelly.
Coat a plain mold with this mixture.

Make and fill

Prepare the custard according to recipe No. 452, mixing in the finely chopped almonds and flavoring with noyeau.
Fill the mold with the custard mixture.

Serve

Serve with cold sauce.

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 + almondtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together693 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Pistachio + saucetop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together63 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Almond + saucetop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together307 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 flavor and a finely chopped texture in the jelly coating.
Clear jelly: Sets to bind the pistachios and form a coating on the mold.
Almonds: Add nutty flavor and a fine texture to the custard.
Custard: Forms the soft, creamy body of the pudding.