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Dessert

Cafe Parfait

A chilled coffee dessert made with coffee, sugar, egg yolks, salt, whipped cream, served in glasses with whipped cream and garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cafe Parfait

Why it works: Coffee and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,497 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells buttery, creamy. The science ↓

Cafe Parfait

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Cook the coffee with the sugar until it spins a thread.

  2. Slowly pour the hot mixture onto the beaten egg yolks.

  3. Add a dash of salt and beat until cold.

Freeze and serve

  1. Fold in the whipped cream gently.

  2. Pack the mixture into an ice cream cylinder and freeze.

  3. When ready to serve, fill tall stemmed glasses.

  4. Top with whipped and sweetened cream.

  5. Garnish with a Maraschino cherry or dust with powdered chocolate.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Coffee + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

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

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

  3. Cherry + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together576 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the mixture, giving it a smooth, creamy body when cooked gently.
Sugar
Sweetens the coffee and helps give the parfait a smooth, scoopable texture when frozen.
Whipped cream
Adds air and richness, lightening the frozen texture.
Strong coffee
Provides the main coffee flavour and bitterness that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Pour the hot syrup slowly onto the egg yolks. Adding hot liquid too quickly can scramble the yolks into lumps. Pouring slowly while beating gently warms the yolks so the mixture stays smooth and thickens evenly.

Swap the cherry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coffee, sugar, egg, cream, chocolate):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, sugar, egg, cream, chocolate. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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