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Dessert

Maple Parfait

A chilled dessert made from beaten egg yolks, maple syrup, and whipped cream, set in a mold and cooled in ice and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Maple syrup and cream work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 607 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Maple Parfait

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks until very light.

  2. In a double boiler, combine the egg yolks and maple syrup, and cook until thick, stirring constantly.

  3. Remove from heat and beat until cold.

Assemble and freeze

  1. Fold in the whipped cream.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold and pack it in ice and salt for 4 hours.

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. Maple syrup + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together607 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Egg + maple syruptop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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 as they cook and add richness and structure to the frozen parfait.
Maple syrup
Provides the sweetness and maple flavor, and helps keep the parfait soft rather than rock-hard.
Heavy cream
Whipped and folded in to add air, lightness and a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Cook the yolks and syrup until thick. Stirring constantly over gentle heat keeps the yolks from scrambling while their proteins set and thicken the custard. If overheated, the yolks curdle and the base turns grainy.

“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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