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Dessert

Apricot and Pistachio Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made with pistachio kernels, milk, egg yolks, apricot puree, and syrup.

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 ↓

Apricot and Pistachio Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pistachio base

  1. Blanch, peel, and pound the pistachio kernels.

  2. Boil the milk.

  3. Whisk in the egg yolks and sugar in a saucepan over low heat until thickened.

  4. Allow the mixture to cool.

  5. Add the pounded pistachios and spinach coloring.

  6. Strain the mixture through a fine cloth into a basin.

Prepare the apricot mixture

  1. Prepare apricot puree by stewing the fruit until soft.

  2. Strain the apricot puree through a sieve.

  3. Mix the apricot puree with the syrup.

  4. Strain the apricot mixture again if necessary.

Freeze and serve

  1. Freeze the pistachio mixture.

  2. Freeze the apricot mixture.

  3. Serve them molded together.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Pistachio + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together188 recipes

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

  4. Milk + apricottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Apricot + spinachtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together48 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Pistachio kernels
Provide the main nutty flavour and pale green colour of the ice cream.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness through emulsifying fat and protein.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that the custard is cooked in.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and lowers the freezing point for a softer texture.
Apricot puree
Adds fruit flavour, acidity and moisture to the apricot layer.
Syrup
Sweetens the apricot puree and keeps it from freezing rock-hard.

The step that matters

Whisk the egg yolks and sugar over low heat until thickened. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated; too much heat scrambles them into lumps. Low heat and constant whisking give a smooth custard that freezes creamy.

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pistachio, milk, egg, sugar, apricot, syrup):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pistachio, milk, egg, sugar, apricot, syrup. 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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