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Dessert

Pistachio Cream Ice

A pistachio-flavored ice cream made with milk or cream, sugar, pistachio pulp, egg yolks, orange-flower water, and spinach greening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 base

  1. In a saucepan, mix the milk or cream, sugar, pistachio pulp, and egg yolks.

  2. Heat the mixture over low heat, stirring until it thickens.

  3. Strain the mixture into a bowl to remove any solids.

Colour and freeze

  1. Work some of the cream with the greening first to ensure even coloring.

  2. Stir in the orange-flower water and spinach greening until smooth.

  3. Chill the mixture and then freeze it according to your ice cream maker's instructions.

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 + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Orange + spinachtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Milk + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard base and add richness as they set during gentle heating.
Pistachios
Provide the main nutty flavour and pale green body of the ice cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream scoopable.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base and provides fat for a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture over low heat, stirring until it thickens. Egg yolks can scramble if heated too quickly or left unstirred. Gentle heat and constant stirring thicken the custard smoothly without curdling.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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