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Dessert

Angel Parfait

A chilled dessert made from a sugar syrup, whipped egg whites, almonds, flavoring, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Angel Parfait

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar and water until the mixture forms a soft ball when dropped in cold water.

Make the parfait

  1. Whip the egg whites until foamy.

  2. Slowly pour the syrup over the egg whites while beating continuously until the mixture is cold.

  3. Add the chopped almond meats, flavoring extract, and whipped cream. Mix well.

  4. Freeze the mixture until set.

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. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

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

  3. Almond + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together486 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into foam to create the airy, light structure of the parfait.
Sugar
Cooked into a syrup that sweetens the parfait and helps give it a smooth, soft texture.
Heavy cream
Whipped to stiff peaks, adding richness and lightness that keeps the frozen dessert tender.

The step that matters

Pouring the syrup into the egg whites. The syrup must be poured slowly while beating continuously so the hot syrup cooks the egg white foam gently and stabilizes it. Pouring too fast can deflate the foam or leave the whites unevenly cooked.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Filbertfits less well

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

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