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Dessert

Angel Parfait

A chilled dessert made by pouring hot sugar syrup over beaten egg whites, then folding in vanilla and stiff cream, and setting in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Angel Parfait

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup and meringue

  1. Boil sugar and water until it threads.

  2. Pour the syrup in a fine stream onto the beaten egg whites.

Finish and freeze

  1. Set the mixture in a dish of ice water and beat until cold.

  2. Fold in the vanilla and the stiffly beaten heavy cream.

  3. Turn the mixture into a mold and pack in ice and salt for 3 hours, using 2 measures of ice to 1 measure of salt.

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

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

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

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

  3. Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

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

  5. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 whites
Whipped to foam, they give the parfait its light, airy structure.
Heavy cream
Whipped and folded in, it adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Boiled into a syrup, it sweetens the dessert and helps stabilize the foam.

The step that matters

Pouring the syrup in a fine stream. Hot syrup poured slowly into moving whites cooks the egg proteins gently and keeps the foam smooth. Pouring too fast or in one dump can scramble the whites or deflate the foam.

“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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