No. 3454

Pistachio Ice Cream

Creme aux Pistaches

Pound half a pound of freshly peeled pistachio nuts with two gills of cream and an ounce of candied citron peel cut up very finely. Break twelve raw egg-yolks in a tinned basin, beat with ten ounces of sugar, and moisten with a pint of boiling milk; cook on a slow fire, stirring all the time with a spatula, and when the composition is cooked add the pistachios; take from the fire, and when cold put in a pint of cream, some spinach green or vegetal green, and a little orange flower water; strain through a fine sieve and then freeze.

Pistachio Ice Cream made with Almonds.—One quart of milk, six whole eggs, a pound and a quarter of sugar, half a pound of almonds, half a gill of orange flower water, one quart of cream and vegetal coloring.

← No. 3453 Peach Ice Cream a la Herbster Ices & Ice Creams No. 3455 Burnt Almond Ice Cream and with Angelica →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cooked egg custard base in the French manner, colored green with vegetable juice rather than extract. Ranhofer assumes a hand-cranked pail packed with ice and salt; a modern machine does the same work.

Gills and pintsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of cream is one cup and half a gill of orange flower water is a scant quarter cup. With a pint of milk and a pint of cream the base comes to roughly two quarts churned, or eight to ten servings.
The custard is the hinge"Cooked" here means thickened to a coating consistency, around 175-180F on an instant-read thermometer. Twelve yolks with no starch will scramble if the pan gets much hotter; a wide pan over low heat and constant stirring, or a bowl over simmering water, keeps it smooth.
Pounding the nutsThe mortar work goes to a food processor. Pulse the peeled pistachios with the cup of cream and the citron to a coarse paste rather than a butter, since the mixture is strained later anyway.
Peeled pistachios"Freshly peeled" means blanched to slip off the papery skins, which is what keeps the color clean and green. Pour boiling water over shelled nuts, let stand a minute, drain and rub the skins off in a towel.
Spinach greenThis is the old kitchen coloring: spinach leaves pounded, the juice pressed out and gently heated so the green solids coagulate, then skimmed off and used as paste. Ranhofer offers "vegetal green" as an alternative without explaining it; it appears to be a vegetable-derived coloring of the sort then sold ready-made. A few drops of modern green food coloring does the same job with less trouble.
Candied citronStill sold at holidays alongside candied peel. An ounce is about two tablespoons chopped fine; it dissolves into the base and reads as perfume rather than fruit.
Orange flower waterStrength varies a good deal from bottle to bottle, and the recipe only says "a little." Start with a teaspoon in the custard version, taste, and add more before churning.
Tinned basinA tin-lined copper (or tinned iron) bowl; the tin kept the food from reacting with the bare metal. Any nonreactive bowl or stainless saucepan is fine.
Strain, then chill hardPush the base through a fine sieve, then refrigerate it overnight before freezing. The sugar is high by modern standards, which keeps the ice cream soft but also slows freezing.
The almond variationThe second formula is a straight substitution: half a pound of blanched almonds stands in for the pistachios, with six whole eggs instead of twelve yolks and coloring supplying the green the nuts cannot. It uses a pound and a quarter of sugar against ten ounces, but also a quart each of milk and cream against a pint each, so in proportion it is only somewhat sweeter.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the repertoire he cooked at Delmonico's in New York, and the book's inclusion of an almond version alongside the pistachio one reflects the cost of the nuts, which were imported and expensive. Tinting almonds green to stand in for pistachio was a known practice, and it is often said to explain why pistachio ice cream is still dyed green — though that is a traditional explanation rather than a documented chain of cause and effect. The coloring itself came from the kitchen garden: vert d'épinards, spinach juice cooked until the green protein coagulates and can be skimmed off as a paste, was used in French professional cookery for tinting sauces, butters and ices. The orange flower water and candied citron place the dish in an older confectionery tradition, where perfumed distillates rather than vanilla did the aromatic work.