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Pistachio Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from cream, milk, sugar, spinach coloring, and almond flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Pistachio Ice Cream

Why it works: Spinach and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 352 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Pistachio Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Scald the cream and milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.

Flavour and freeze

  1. Cool the mixture, then add spinach coloring and almond flavoring.

  2. Freeze the mixture until solid.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Spinach + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together352 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Cream + spinachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Adds fat, which makes the ice cream rich and smooth.
Milk
Adds water and milk solids that give body and a softer texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before adding flavoring. Scalded dairy should cool before flavorings go in, since heat can dull delicate almond aroma and uneven colour can result from adding coloring to hot liquid.

Swap the spinach

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

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

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