What is Pistachio Essence Glossary + Recipes with Pistachio Essence | Tarladalal.com Viewed 14766 times

What is pistachio essence?

Pistachio essence is a highly concentrated flavour extracted from the nuts, pistachio onto an alcohol base or synthesised artificially using chemical compounds. The pistachio essence is dark caramel in color and is very thick in consistency. Artificial essence is simply chemical mixtures that mimic a natural flavor in some way. Anything that we smell has to contain some sort of volatile chemical -- a chemical that evaporates and enters a person's nose. Pistachio essence has just one or a few dominant chemical components (usually esters) that carry the bulk of the taste/smell signal. If you add these esters to a product, the product will taste, to some degree, like dried nuts. To make more realistic flavors you add other chemicals in the correct proportions to get closer and closer to the real thing. You can do that by trial and error or by chemical analysis of the real thing.Pistachio essence is an easy way to add strong nutty flavour to baking products, sauces, ice cream, and beverages.

How to select pistachio essence

The essence should be food grade and lie in adherence to the international standards for food. Check the expiry date before buying.

Culinary Uses of pistachio essence

" Pistachio essence is used to predominantly flavour desserts, baked goods , beverages and ice creams
" This wonderful flavour compounds is useful anywhere you need a bit of nutty flavour. They produce a distinct flavour in cookies and sauces.
" Simply drop a few drops of pistachio essence to butter cream or cake batter to get a greenish pista flavoured recipe.
" Use pure pistachio essence to flavor marinades, puddings, pies, chutney, syrup and chocolate sauce.
" Pistachio essence can also be used to add flavor in Indian sweets like pista barfi, pista roll and pista halwa.
" For a great depth of flavour, try layering a dish with both fresh ingredients along with an essence or flavour, such as freshly chopped pistachio along with pistachio essence in a pista cake or pudding.

How to store pistachio essence

The pistachio essence is usually stored in dark coloured bottles, kept away from heat or direct sunlight. They can also be refrigerated.

Health benefits

" Since pistachio essence is usually synthetic and produced to add pista flavours artificially, they do not contain any substantial health benefits.