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Dessert

Parfait a U Cafe

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

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make 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 salt.

  3. Pack the mold in layers of ice (3 inches deep) 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 with air to form the light, creamy body of the parfait.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the parfait and dissolves smoothly into the cream and coffee.
Strong black coffee
Provides the coffee flavour that defines the dish.

The step that matters

Whipping and draining the froth. Whipping incorporates air that gives the parfait its lightness, while cold conditions keep the cream from warming and collapsing. Draining and re-whipping the froth helps build a smoother, more stable texture 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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