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Dessert

Parisian Nougats

A sweet nougat made with pistachios, sugar, vanilla, cochineal, currants, and coated with coarse sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 407 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Parisian Nougats

Ingredients

Directions

Make the nougat

  1. Boil the sugar until it reaches the hard crack stage.

  2. Add the pistachios, cochineal, and vanilla; mix gently.

  3. Spread the mixture flat on a very lightly oiled baking sheet.

  4. Use a lightly oiled lemon to flatten the nougat to about ⅙ inch thick.

Finish and cut

  1. Before it cools, sprinkle with coarse sugar and currants; press them in with your fingers.

  2. While still hot, cut the nougat into small oblongs or diamonds, about 2.5 inches long and 1 inch wide.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Vanilla + curranttop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Pistachio + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Sugar
Boiled to the hard crack stage, it sets into a firm, brittle candy structure.
Pistachio kernels
Provide nutty flavour and crunchy texture throughout the nougat.
Cleaned grocer's currants
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and contrast with the brittle candy.

The step that matters

Flatten before it cools. Hot sugar syrup hardens quickly as it cools, so it sets into a brittle candy that becomes hard to shape. Flattening and adding the coarse sugar and currants while it is still warm lets them press in and the sheet be thinned evenly before it sets.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pistachio, sugar, vanilla. 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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