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Pistachio Icing

A sweet icing made with sugar syrup, egg whites, cream of tartar, and pistachio nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and nuts match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Pistachio Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Boil sugar and water until it forms a soft ball in cold water.

  2. Beat egg whites until stiff, adding cream of tartar when half beaten.

  3. Beat syrup into the egg whites.

Finish

  1. Mince the pistachio nuts and strew them over the icing.

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 + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Cream + nutstop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Sugar
Dissolves into a syrup that sets the icing and gives it sweetness.
Egg whites
Whipped to a foam that gives the icing its light, airy structure.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites so the foam holds its shape.
Pistachio nuts
Adds crunch and a nutty flavour on the surface of the icing.

The step that matters

Beat syrup into the egg whites. The syrup must be hot and at the soft ball stage, and it should be poured in a thin stream while beating. This cooks the egg whites and sets a stable, glossy foam; if the syrup is added too fast or too cool, the icing can stay runny or deflate.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, cream, pistachio. 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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