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Dessert

New England Parfait

A chilled custard parfait made with milk, egg yolks, sugar, butter, whipped cream, vanilla, bread crumbs, and topped with whipped egg whites, cherries, and pecans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

New England Parfait

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Pour hot milk over beaten egg yolks and sugar in a double boiler.

  2. Add butter and cook until the custard coats the spoon.

  3. Remove from heat and beat until cold.

Freeze

  1. Fold in whipped cream and vanilla extract.

  2. Pour mixture into a mold and add dried bread crumbs.

  3. Cover the mold and grease the edge with lard to prevent water from entering.

  4. Pack in ice and salt, and let stand for about 3 hours.

  5. Stir once when nearly frozen to prevent crumbs from settling.

Serve

  1. Turn out onto a glass dish.

  2. Surround with beaten egg whites and whipped cream.

  3. Garnish with candied cherries and pecan nuts.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Vanilla + nutstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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 enrich its flavour and colour as they cook.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture once whipped and folded in.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they add lightness to the surrounding garnish.
Boston brown bread crumbs
Add texture and a toasty, molasses-like flavour to the frozen parfait.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and softens the texture of the frozen dessert.

The step that matters

Stir once when nearly frozen. Stirring at the right moment keeps the bread crumbs suspended rather than sinking to the bottom. Stirring too early or too late leaves them settled or the mixture too firm to blend.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Cocoafits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, butter, cream, vanilla, bread. 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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