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Dessert

Angel Parfait

A frozen dessert made from a sugar syrup, egg whites, whipped cream, vanilla, and buried in salt and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Angel Parfait

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup and meringue

  1. Boil sugar and water until a soft ball forms in cold water.

  2. Pour the syrup in a fine stream over the beaten egg whites.

  3. Beat occasionally until cool.

Assemble the parfait

  1. Fold in the whipped cream and vanilla.

  2. Line a mold with wax paper.

  3. Fill the mold with the mixture, allowing it to overflow.

  4. Cover with wax paper and tie on the lid.

Freeze

  1. Bury the mold in equal parts of salt and ice.

  2. Let it stand for three to four 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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 whites
Beaten to form a foam that gives the parfait its light, airy structure.
Heavy cream
Whipped to add volume and a rich, creamy texture to the frozen dessert.
Sugar
Cooked into a syrup that sweetens the dessert and helps keep it soft when frozen.

The step that matters

Pour the syrup in a fine stream over the beaten egg whites. Hot syrup poured slowly into whipped whites cooks them gently into a stable meringue. Pouring too fast or in a thick stream can deflate the foam or leave it lumpy.

“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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