Pistachio Ice-cream

Crème glacée aux pistaches (pistachio ice cream) teaches that a supporting flavour need not announce itself. Pistachio gives fragrance and colour; sweet almond supplies the roundness and body pistachio alone cannot. Pound them together and the two read as one clear, deep pistachio flavour.

The original assumed a heavy mortar, spare hands to skin every pistachio, and an ice-and-salt freezer already turning in the pastry room. A brief blanch, a small food processor, and a domestic churn are the honest home equivalents. The finished base is scaled to about one quart while keeping the book's precise proportion, two ounces of sweet almond to two and a half ounces of pistachio. The mortar and brigade freezer are scaffolding; the freshly peeled nuts and 20-minute infusion in boiled milk are the dish, so those stay. One cook, one stove, one evening's work, then the freezer finishes it.

Expect a natural celadon green, not confectioner's green, with a dense, yielding scoop and no raw nut grit. The step that matters most comes first: peel the pistachios freshly while they are still warm, because skin left on turns their green drab before the custard ever reaches the pan.