Home › Pudding Sauces › Angel Parfait
Angel Parfait
1 cup sugar 3/4 cup water Whites 3 eggs 1 pint heavy cream 1 tablespoon vanilla Boil sugar and water until syrup will thread when dropped from tip of spoon. Pour slowly on the beaten whites of eggs, and continue the beating until mixture is cool. Add cream beaten until stiff, and vanilla; then freeze.
A still-frozen parfait built on an Italian meringue: hot syrup poured onto beaten whites, lightened with whipped cream. No churning is required, so it works in an ordinary freezer.
- The hinge: syrup stage"Will thread when dropped from tip of spoon" corresponds to roughly 230-234F on a thermometer, the thread stage just short of soft ball. Under-cooked syrup tends to give a slack meringue that weeps in the freezer; cooked much beyond this, the syrup begins to set as it hits the whites.
- Pour slowly, and keep beatingAdd the syrup in a thin steady stream down the side of the bowl with the mixer running, then beat until the bowl is cool to the touch, usually 8-10 minutes. Folding cream into a warm meringue melts it and you lose the volume the dessert depends on.
- "Heavy cream" then and nowCream sold as heavy in this period was generally in the neighbourhood of 35-40% fat, broadly comparable to modern heavy whipping cream, though standards varied. A pint whipped to stiff peaks gives roughly a quart of foam; whip it cold and stop while it still looks glossy.
- VanillaA full tablespoon is a strong hand by current taste. Two teaspoons of a good extract is nearer what most cooks would want today.
- Freezing without a churnOriginally the mixture was packed into a mould and set in ice and coarse salt for some hours. In a home freezer, use a loaf pan or covered mould, press plastic wrap onto the surface, and allow four to six hours. Do not stir during freezing; the aerated base sets on its own.
- Egg whitesThe syrup warms the whites but does not reliably bring them to a pasteurising temperature throughout. Pasteurised whites, sold in cartons, whip acceptably and remove the question for anyone serving the very young, the elderly or the immune-compromised.
- Yield and servingAbout 1 1/2 quarts, serving eight to ten. Let it stand five minutes before unmoulding or slicing.
Parfait in American cookbooks of this period meant a still-frozen dessert of whipped cream folded into a boiled-syrup meringue or a cooked custard base, poured into a mould and set in an ice-and-salt freezer without stirring. The French original was a coffee-flavoured frozen cream; by the turn of the twentieth century the name in the United States had loosened to cover any of these mixtures, and later loosened further to mean the layered glass of ice cream and syrup served at soda fountains. "Angel" here follows the same naming logic as angel cake: a preparation built on egg whites alone, pale and light, with the yolks reserved for other work. The technique of pouring hot syrup onto beaten whites, what is now called Italian meringue, was well established in domestic cookery by then and gave a foam stable enough to survive hours in the ice without collapsing.