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Dessert

Angel Parfait

A chilled dessert of sugar syrup, beaten egg whites, vanilla, and heavy cream, set in ice and salt.

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

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and water.

  2. Stir slowly until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Cook the mixture slowly until it reaches the soft ball stage.

Make the parfait

  1. Slowly pour 3 tablespoons of the hot syrup into the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  2. Add the vanilla or chosen flavor and the whipped cream, mixing gently.

  3. Mold the mixture.

  4. Pack it in ice and salt for 4 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. Vanilla + creamtop 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
Whipped into a stiff foam that gives the parfait its light, airy structure.
Heavy cream
Whipped and folded in to add richness and a creamy, smooth texture.
Sugar
Cooked into a syrup that sweetens the parfait and helps it stay soft when frozen.

The step that matters

Cooking the syrup to the soft ball stage. Syrup taken to the soft ball stage has the right sugar concentration to blend smoothly into the egg whites and keep the frozen dessert tender rather than hard and icy. Undercooked syrup can thin the foam, while overcooked syrup can freeze firm.

“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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