No. 3478

Parfait with Nougat and with Almonds

Parfait au Nougat et aux Amandes

Boil four gills of syrup to twenty degrees with half a vanilla bean; pour this slowly over ten egg-yolks beaten in a vessel, after removing the vanilla; whip the preparation well over the fire until it is as thick as a cream, but avoid having it boil, then remove and stir continuously until frothy and cold; now beat it again on ice to give consistency, and incorporate two quarts of well-drained whipped cream, also half a pound of almond nougat (No. 3621) crushed finely with a rolling-pin. Place the preparation in a three-quart bomb or parfait mold (Fig. 630) lined with paper, incrust in salted ice, and put on the lid, cementing the joints with butter; cover this with a thick layer of salted ice, then freeze for two hours and a half; lastly remove the mold, wash it quickly in cold water, wipe and unmold the parfait on a folded napkin; remove the paper and serve surrounded by small cakes.

With Almonds.—Have the same preparation as for the parfait with nougat. Pound half a pound of new, freshly shelled almonds with a little water, vanilla sugar (No. 3165) and noyau; when pounded to a pulp use them instead of the nougat and finish exactly the same as for the above. If the two ices are to be served in the same mold have a waffle partition the same size as the center of the mold; fill one side of it with parfait with nougat, and the other side with parfait with almonds.

← No. 3477 Mousse with Macaroons or Chestnuts Ices & Ice Creams No. 3479 Excellent with Coffee and Parfait with Coffe →

For the Modern Kitchen

A still-frozen parfait in the original French sense: a cooked yolk base lightened with whipped cream, frozen in a sealed mold without churning. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the measurements are written in a professional shorthand that no longer circulates.

The hinge: the yolk base must not boilWhipping the hot syrup into the yolks and then cooking over heat is a sabayon. Take it to about 175-180F and no further; above that the yolks scramble and the finished parfait carries hard flecks. Beating it cold again over ice before the cream goes in is what gives the parfait its body, since it is never churned.
Four gills of syrupA gill is half a cup, so four gills is two cups. "Boiled to twenty degrees" is degrees Baume on a saccharometer, roughly a 36 percent sugar solution: about 1 1/4 cups sugar dissolved in 2 cups water and brought briefly to a boil lands close to that density without a hydrometer, though it makes rather more syrup than the four gills needed.
Two quarts of whipped creamThis is volume after whipping, not before. Around a quart of heavy cream, whipped to soft peaks and drained in a sieve, gives the two quarts called for. Draining matters: excess liquid freezes into grit.
Almond nougat, No. 3621Ranhofer's nougat is caramelized sugar poured over toasted almonds and set hard, closer to what most people now call almond praline or brittle. Any plain almond brittle, crushed fine, stands in; commercial soft chewy nougat does not.
NoyauA liqueur flavored with stone-fruit kernels, still sold as creme de noyaux. Amaretto is the easier substitute. Do not attempt to build the flavor from bitter almonds or apricot kernels.
Freezing without a salted-ice caveThe buttered joints and the covering layer of salt ice existed to keep brine out of the mold and cold in. A domestic freezer will do the same work: line the mold, cover tightly with plastic and foil, and allow considerably longer than the two and a half hours quoted for the ice cave -- a three-quart mold may need six hours or more, and is safest left overnight.
UnmoldingA quick dip in cold water and a wipe is genuinely enough for a paper-lined mold; warm water will melt a rim of the parfait and blur the shape.
The waffle partitionA thin baked wafer cut to the cross-section of the mold, used to keep the two mixtures apart. A strip of stiff parchment or acetate does the job and pulls out cleanly at service.
YieldA three-quart mold serves 12 to 16 as written, with the small cakes around the base.

A Little History

This is from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he assembled after some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the cross-references to numbered recipes elsewhere in the book are a sign of how it was meant to be used: as a kitchen manual for cooks who already had the nougat and the vanilla sugar standing by. Parfait then meant something narrower than it does now, a frozen yolk-and-cream preparation set in a mold without stirring, and it is generally traced to coffee-flavored versions in mid-nineteenth-century French practice before the name spread to other flavors. The word nougat in this period regularly denotes caramelized almonds in the hard, brittle style rather than the aerated white confection, which is why the recipe can send it under a rolling pin. The double-filled mold with a wafer partition belongs to the same tradition as the elaborate bombes of the era, when a frozen dessert was expected to arrive at table as a piece of architecture.