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Pistachio Ice Pudding

A chilled custard dessert flavored with pistachios and noyeau.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Pistachio Ice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Make a custard by whisking the eggs and gradually adding the cream.

  2. Sweeten the custard to taste and flavor with noyeau.

Freeze

  1. During the freezing process, add the finely chopped pistachios.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + pistachiotop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

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

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Eggs
Whisked into the cream, they thicken and set the custard as it chills and freezes.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture through its fat content.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and softens the texture of the frozen dessert.
Pistachios
Add nutty flavor and a contrasting bite to the smooth frozen custard.

The step that matters

Adding the pistachios during freezing. Add the chopped pistachios only once the custard has partly frozen. If added too early, they tend to sink to the bottom, and if added too late they will not mix evenly through the dessert.

Swap the pistachio

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

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Pistachiothe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Pecansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, 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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