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Dessert

Cafe Parfait

A chilled custard dessert made with coffee, sugar, egg yolks, heavy cream, and candied cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Cafe Parfait

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 ↓

Cafe Parfait

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a double boiler, combine the coffee, sugar, and egg yolks.

  2. Cook until thickened, then strain and cool.

Freeze and serve

  1. Whip the cream until stiff and gently mix it with the custard.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold and cover tightly with a buttered cloth.

  3. Pack in ice and salt, and let it stand for three hours.

  4. Carefully remove to a chilled platter, surround with sweetened whipped cream, and garnish with candied cherries.

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

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

  2. Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

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

  3. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

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

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

  5. 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 yolks
Thicken the custard when gently cooked and provide richness and emulsifying structure.
Heavy cream
Whipped to add air and body, giving the parfait a light, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and softens the texture of the frozen dessert.
Very strong coffee
Supplies the coffee flavor and liquid for the custard base.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until thickened. Egg yolks set when heated gently; overheating can scramble them into lumps, so cook slowly over a double boiler and stop once it coats a spoon.

“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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