Skip to main content
Dessert

Cafe Parfait

A frozen dessert made by whipping cream, sugar, and coffee, then freezing in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cafe Parfait

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 ↓

Cafe Parfait

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Whip the cream, sugar, and coffee together until thick.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold.

Freeze

  1. Pack the mold in ice and salt.

  2. Let it stand without stirring until frozen.

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. 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
Whipping traps air in its fat and protein, giving the parfait a light, rich body.
Sugar
Sweetens the parfait and lowers the freezing point, keeping the frozen texture softer.
Strong coffee
Adds the main coffee flavor and aroma to the cream.

The step that matters

Let it stand without stirring until frozen. Salt in the ice bath lowers its melting point so the mold gets colder than plain ice would allow. Stirring while it freezes breaks up forming ice crystals and makes the texture coarse and grainy.

“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.

You might also like

Coffee Ice CreamCoffee Ice Cream91 recipesCoffee CustardCoffee Custard27 recipesCoffee CakeCoffee Cake21 recipesCoffee Bavarian CreamCoffee Bavarian Cream14 recipes