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Dessert

Angel Parfait

A chilled dessert made by combining a boiled sugar syrup with beaten egg whites and cream, then cooling in salt and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Angel Parfait

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the water and sugar, stirring until it boils.

  2. Boil without stirring until it spins a thread.

Make the parfait

  1. Add the syrup to the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  2. Beat the mixture until cool.

  3. Flavor the mixture.

  4. Gently stir in the cream.

Freeze and finish

  1. Pack the mixture in salt and ice for 3 to 4 hours.

  2. Optionally add nuts or candied fruits.

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

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

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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 whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that gives the parfait its light, airy structure.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the dish and, cooked into syrup, helps the whipped whites hold their shape.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the frozen dessert.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup without stirring until it spins a thread. The syrup must reach the right concentration. If it is undercooked, the frozen dessert stays soft and runny; if overcooked, it turns hard and grainy. Stirring can cause sugar crystals to form, so the syrup is left alone once it boils.

“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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