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Chocolate Parfait

A chilled chocolate custard dessert topped with Italian meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Parfait

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Make a custard by heating milk, sugar, and egg yolks in a saucepan until thickened.

  2. Melt the chocolate over hot water.

  3. Add a small amount of the hot custard to the melted chocolate and beat until smooth.

  4. Stir in the remaining custard and salt, then strain the mixture.

Freeze and serve

  1. Cool the mixture, then add cream and vanilla.

  2. Freeze the mixture until firm.

  3. Line a mold with the frozen mixture, fill it with Italian meringue, and cover it.

  4. Pack the mold in salt and ice and let it stand for three hours.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness and emulsifying power to the base.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavor and, once melted into the custard, a smooth dense body.
Thin cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the frozen parfait a softer, creamier texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the parfait tender rather than rock-hard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, carrying the other ingredients.

The step that matters

Beat the chocolate into the custard until smooth. Adding a small amount of hot custard to the melted chocolate first helps the two blend evenly. Adding it all at once can cause the chocolate to seize into lumps.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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