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Dessert

Washington Cafe Parfait

A chilled dessert made with thick cream, sugar, and strong black coffee, topped with whipped cream and cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Washington Cafe Parfait

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a large bowl, combine the cream, sugar, and coffee.

  2. Whip the mixture until it forms stiff peaks.

Freeze

  1. Transfer the mixture to an ice cream freezer and press the lid down tightly.

  2. Pack the freezer with salt and ice, then freeze for 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve in glasses topped with whipped cream and a cherry.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Cream + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Sugar + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Its fat and whipped air give the parfait a rich, smooth, creamy body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the frozen texture softer.
Coffee
Provides the main coffee flavour and a bitter contrast to the sweetness.

The step that matters

Whipping to stiff peaks. Under-whipped cream gives a dense, icy parfait because too little air is trapped. Over-whipping can turn the cream grainy or buttery, so stop once stiff peaks form.

“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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