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Dessert

Angel Parfait

A chilled custard dessert made with sugar syrup, egg whites, vanilla, and heavy cream.

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 base

  1. Boil sugar and water until it threads.

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

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

Fold and freeze

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

  2. Turn the mixture into a mold and pack it in ice and salt for three hours, using two measures of ice to one 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 into a foam that gives the parfait its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Makes a syrup that sweetens the parfait and helps the foam hold its shape.
Heavy cream
Whipped and folded in for richness and a smooth, airy texture.
Vanilla extract
Adds aroma and flavor to the cream and egg mixture.

The step that matters

Pour the syrup in a fine stream onto the beaten egg whites. Hot syrup gently cooks the egg whites as it is added, which stabilizes the foam. Pouring slowly while beating keeps the syrup from clumping or deflating the whites.

“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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