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Dessert

Chocolate Parpait

A chilled chocolate custard dessert made with milk, chocolate, eggs, cream, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Parpait

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Combine milk, sugar, and egg yolks in a saucepan to make a custard.

  2. Melt the chocolate over hot water.

  3. Add a small amount of the hot custard to the melted chocolate and beat until smooth.

  4. Stir in the remaining custard and salt.

  5. Strain the mixture.

  6. Cool the mixture.

Freeze and pack

  1. Add cream and vanilla.

  2. Freeze the mixture.

  3. Line a mold with the frozen mixture.

  4. Fill the mold with Italian meringue.

  5. Cover the mold.

  6. Pack the mold in salt and ice.

  7. Let it stand for three 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

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 yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness to the frozen texture.
Cream
Adds fat that keeps the parfait smooth and creamy when frozen.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers its freezing point for a softer texture.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavor and color of the parfait.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.

The step that matters

Add a small amount of the hot custard to the melted chocolate. Adding hot custard gradually, rather than all at once, tempers the mixture so the chocolate blends smoothly instead of seizing or clumping.

“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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