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Pistachio and Almond Creams
Make a nice vanilla ice-cream; have ready pistachio nuts, which have been prepared by pouring boiling water over them and letting them stand in it a few moments; then strip off the skins and pound to a paste in a mortar, and mix with the cream. Freeze.
A one-line instruction that assumes you already know how to make and freeze a custard. The only real work is the nut paste, and that is where the flavour lives.
- No quantities givenThe original leaves the nut proportion entirely to the cook. For a quart of finished ice cream, 4 to 6 oz of shelled pistachios pounded to paste gives a clear flavour without turning the mixture oily.
- BlanchingBoiling water loosens the papery skins; the original says only 'a few moments,' though two to three minutes does no harm. Drain and rub them off in a towel while still warm. The skins are what make the finished cream grey-brown rather than pale green, so take the time to remove them.
- Mortar or machineA food processor will do the pounding, but pistachios go from paste to nut butter to a separated oily slick very quickly. Pulse, and add a spoonful of the cold custard to help it grind smoothly.
- When to add itMix the paste into the cooled custard and let it sit an hour or more before churning, so the flavour infuses. Adding it to a warm custard is fine too, but do not boil it in.
- The colourExpect a dull ivory-green, not the bright mint shade of much commercial pistachio ice cream, which is usually coloured. Green colouring was also used in period confectionery if you want the look.
- Almond versionThe title promises almonds as well; treat sweet almonds the same way, blanched and pounded, with a little of the custard to keep them from oiling. Use sweet almonds only -- some nineteenth-century books call for bitter almonds, which are not sold for eating.
- Freezing"Freeze" meant a pail packed with crushed ice and coarse salt, cranked and scraped. Any modern ice cream maker replaces it; a still-frozen version needs stirring every 30 minutes for the first two hours.
- YieldThe original gives no quantities, so the yield depends on the batch you make; a quart serves six to eight small portions. It sets harder than most commercial ice cream, so let it stand a few minutes before scooping.
Pistachio ice cream reached American cookbooks by way of French confectionery, where glace à la pistache was already a standard flavour in nineteenth-century ice and cream repertoires; the nut itself was an imported luxury, priced accordingly. That is why this recipe is so terse: it belongs to a tradition of ice-cream variations that assume a single reliable vanilla custard base which the cook then flavours — with nuts, fruit, coffee, or chocolate — rather than repeating the method each time. The instruction to pound the nuts in a mortar is a reminder of how much muscle a fashionable dessert cost in a household without machines, and the hand-cranked freezer packed in ice and salt made ice cream a summer dish tied to the ice trade that supplied northern cities.