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Dessert

Cafe Parfait

A chilled dessert made with coffee, sugar, egg yolks, cream, and optional rum, vanilla, and maraschino, topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cafe Parfait

Why it works: Rum and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 728 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cafe Parfait

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil sugar and coffee until it forms a thread when dripped from a spoon.

  2. Pour the mixture over the beaten egg yolks and beat rapidly for 10 minutes.

  3. Return to a double boiler and cook until the mixture clings to a spoon.

Add cream and freeze

  1. Add ½ quart of beaten sweet cream and mix well.

  2. Incorporate black coffee until the desired color is achieved.

  3. Just before freezing, add the remaining ½ quart of beaten cream.

Serve

  1. Once frozen, fill glasses with the parfait and top with whipped cream.

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. Rum + vanillatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together728 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Coffee + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,391 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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 yolks
Thicken the custard base and add richness through their emulsifying fat and proteins.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and richness, and whipped air gives the frozen parfait a light, smooth texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point, keeping the parfait softer when frozen.
Clear black coffee
Provides the coffee flavor and the brown color of the parfait.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard over a double boiler. Egg yolks thicken as they heat but can scramble if overheated. Gentle, indirect heat lets the mixture thicken smoothly into a custard that coats a spoon.

“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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