Skip to main content
Dessert

Caramel Parfait

A caramel custard dessert with whipped cream, garnished with browned almonds and crushed caramel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Caramel Parfait

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel syrup

  1. Caramelize 4 cups of sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Add ½ cup of boiling water and stir until combined.

  3. Add ¾ cup of sugar and set the saucepan over hot water.

  4. Beat the yolks of 2 eggs with ¾ teaspoon of salt, then add to the hot syrup.

  5. Cook the mixture until slightly thickened, then chill it in ice water.

Make the parfait

  1. Whip 1 cup of heavy cream and 1 cup of thin cream or rich milk.

  2. Fold the whipped cream into the chilled mixture, then mold it.

  3. Let it stand for about 2 hours in salt and ice.

Serve

  1. Sprinkle with browned almonds and crushed caramel before serving.

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 + creamtop 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. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  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 hot syrup and add richness to the custard-like base.
Heavy cream
Whipped to add air and a light, creamy texture to the parfait.
Sugar
Caramelized to give the parfait its deep, toasty caramel flavor.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture until slightly thickened. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but overheating can scramble them into lumps. Stop once the mixture coats a spoon and chill it promptly to keep it smooth.

Swap the almond

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, cream. 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.

You might also like

Almond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipesAlmond WafersAlmond Wafers22 recipesCoconut Almond CakeCoconut Almond Cake17 recipes