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Dessert

Pistachio and Strawberry Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made with gelatin, sugar, strawberry juice, whipped cream, pistachios, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 and Strawberry Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine the dissolved gelatin, sugar, and strawberry juice in a bowl.

  2. Fold in the whipped cream.

Add the pistachios and freeze

  1. Scald the crushed pistachio nuts in the milk, then add to the mixture.

  2. Tint the mixture green.

  3. Spoon the mixture alternately into a mold and pack it in the freezer.

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. Strawberry + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

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

  4. Strawberry + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,525 recipes

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

  5. Strawberry + pistachiotop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together64 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the mixture so the ice cream holds its shape when frozen.
Whipped cream
Adds air and fat, giving a light, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and softens the texture as it freezes.
Strawberry juice
Provides the main fruit flavour and pink colour.
Milk
Adds dairy richness and carries the pistachio flavour when used to scald the nuts.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped cream. Folding gently keeps the air in the whipped cream. Stirring hard would deflate it and make the frozen ice cream dense rather than light.

Swap the strawberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Strawberrythe original

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