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Pistachio Cream
Blanch and peel a quarter of a pound of pistachio nuts, and pound them to a smooth paste, with a little rose or orange-flower water. Stir the paste into a pint of thick cream, add a table-spoonful of sugar and a table-spoonful of brandy, and stir the mixture over a gentle fire until it is on the point of boiling. Pour it out, and when cold serve in a glass dish or in glasses, with a few pistachios, blanched and cut into long narrow strips, sprinkled on the top. Probable cost, 2s. 10d. Sufficient for a little more than a pint of cream.
A Victorian uncooked-custard-free cream: nothing thickens it but the fat in the cream itself, so the result is a pourable, scented cream rather than a set dessert. The hinge is the heating — take it to the point of boiling and no further, or the cream will separate and the perfume will cook off.
- Do not let it boilBring it just to the shiver before boiling over low heat, stirring constantly, then take it off. Boiled cream at this fat level will catch on the base and can split; the flower water's perfume also suffers with prolonged heat.
- "Thick cream"Closest today to British double cream, a minimum of 48% butterfat. US heavy cream (36% and up) or whipping cream (30-36%) is the nearest equivalent and will give a thinner result; it still works, but expect a sauce-like consistency rather than something that coats a spoon heavily.
- Blanching the nutsPour boiling water over shelled pistachios, leave one minute, drain, and rub the skins off in a cloth. This is what keeps the colour green rather than brown, and it is worth the ten minutes.
- Pounding without a mortarA food processor will do it, but pistachios turn oily before they turn smooth. Add the rose or orange-flower water a teaspoon at a time and pulse; if it still refuses to come together, loosen with a spoonful of the measured cream.
- Flower waters are stronger nowFlower waters vary -- Commercial rose and orange-flower waters differ widely in concentration from brand to brand, so do not assume yours matches what the original cook had. Start with a teaspoon for the whole pint and taste; too much reads as soap.
- SweetnessA single tablespoon of sugar in a pint of cream is barely sweet by current expectations. Taste before chilling and add more if you want it to read as a dessert rather than a scented cream.
- Cost note2s. 10d. was a substantial sum for a household dish — imported pistachios were a luxury good. It has no bearing on the method; Cassell's priced nearly every entry so a cook could budget a menu.
- Yield and servingA pint of cream fills four to six small glasses. Chill several hours; it will thicken slightly but never set, so serve it in glasses or a shallow glass dish with the shredded pistachios scattered at the last moment, before they soften.
Pistachio cream belongs to a family of nut creams — almond, hazelnut, pistachio — that English cookery absorbed from French confectionery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where crème de pistaches appeared both as a spoon cream and as an ice. The pairing with rose or orange-flower water is often said to point further back still, to the medieval and early modern route by which pistachios and distilled flower waters are thought to have reached European kitchens from the eastern Mediterranean and Persia; the nut itself is native to that region and was an expensive import throughout Cassell's readership. What is notable in this version is what is absent: no eggs, no gelatine, no isinglass. It relies entirely on the richness of unhomogenised Victorian dairy cream — it is a lesson in what cream alone will do.