Skip to main content
Dessert

Parfait a U Caf&

A frozen dessert made with thick cream, strong black coffee, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Parfait a U Caf&

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mix the coffee, sugar, and cream together.

  2. Whip the mixture until frothy, skimming off the froth into a colander to drain.

  3. Whip any drained froth again.

  4. Use a Dover egg beater and place the cream in a pan of cracked ice while beating.

Freeze

  1. Once whipped, transfer the mixture into an ice cream mold and press the lid down tightly.

  2. Seal the joint with a strip of muslin dipped in melted butter to keep out the salt.

  3. Pack the mold in layers of ice (3 inches) and salt (1 inch) deep.

  4. Cover with a piece of carpet and place in a cold area for at least 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Turn out the parfait and serve, renewing the ice if necessary.

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. 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. 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

Thick cream
Whipped into air bubbles, it forms the light, creamy body of the parfait.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves easily into the cream, so it blends in smoothly.
Strong black coffee
Provides the coffee flavour and a small amount of liquid to the cream.

The step that matters

Whipping the mixture. Whipping over cracked ice keeps the cream cold, so the fat stays firm enough to hold air. If it warms, the foam collapses and the parfait turns out dense.

“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.

You might also like

Coffee Ice CreamCoffee Ice Cream91 recipesCoffee CustardCoffee Custard27 recipesCoffee CakeCoffee Cake21 recipesCoffee Bavarian CreamCoffee Bavarian Cream14 recipes