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Dessert

Cafe Parfait

A chilled dessert made with whipped cream, sugar, and strong coffee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Cafe Parfait

Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Cafe Parfait

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the whipped cream, sugar, and strong coffee.

  2. Whip the mixture together until thick.

Freeze

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  2. Pack the mold in ice and salt.

  3. Let it stand without stirring for 4 to 5 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Cream + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Heavy cream
Whipped cream traps air and adds richness, giving the parfait its light, creamy body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the texture, keeping the frozen dessert from becoming too hard.
Strong coffee
Adds bitter coffee flavor and aroma that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Let it stand without stirring. Stirring while the mixture freezes breaks up the air trapped in the whipped cream and lets larger ice crystals form, leaving a denser, grainier texture.

“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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