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Dessert

Parfait Au Cafe

A frozen dessert made from milk, coffee, egg yolks, sugar, and flavored with curaçao or rum punch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and rum work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 138 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Parfait Au Cafe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the strong coffee.

  3. In another saucepan, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar.

  4. Stir in the milk and coffee mixture.

  5. Place the saucepan on the heat and whisk until just boiling.

  6. Remove from heat and let cool.

Freeze and serve

  1. Strain the mixture into a mold and freeze.

  2. When half frozen, stir in the curaçao or rum punch and continue freezing.

  3. Turn out and serve immediately on a doily.

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. Coffee + rumtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together138 recipes

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

  2. Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Milk + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together967 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  5. Coffee + sugartop 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness to the frozen texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the parfait and softens the frozen texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the base.
Strong coffee
Provides the main coffee flavor.
Curaçao or rum punch
Adds aroma and flavor, and stays softer when stirred in partly frozen.

The step that matters

Whisk the custard only until just boiling. Egg yolks thicken as they heat but scramble if overheated, leaving a grainy texture. Stop once it just reaches a boil, then cool it before freezing.

“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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