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Dessert

Macaroon Parfait

A chilled dessert made with whipped cream, almond macaroons, powdered sugar, served with whipped cream and cherries.

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

Macaroon Parfait

Ingredients

Directions

Make the parfait

  1. Beat the cream until well whipped.

  2. Mix the grated macaroons and powdered sugar lightly with the cream.

  3. Pack the mixture in ice and salt, and let it stand for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve in punch glasses, adding a spoonful of whipped cream and a Maraschino cherry on top.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

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

  3. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Whipped to create the airy, rich body of the parfait.
Almond macaroons
Add almond flavor and a light, crumbly texture to the cream.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the mixture and dissolves easily into the cream.

The step that matters

Beat the cream until well whipped. Cream must be whipped to stiff, airy peaks before folding in other ingredients. Under-whipped cream stays loose and dense, so the frozen parfait will be heavy and icy rather than light.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Hazelnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar. 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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