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Dessert

Maple Parfait

A chilled dessert made from maple syrup, egg yolks, cream, folded together and set in salt and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and maple syrup 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. Heat the maple syrup.

  2. Slowly pour the hot syrup into the lightly beaten egg yolks.

  3. Place the mixture in a double boiler and cook until it thickens, stirring constantly.

  4. Whip the mixture until cool.

Assemble and freeze

  1. Gently fold the whipped mixture into the whipped cream.

  2. Pack the parfait in salt and ice 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. Cream + maple syruptop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together607 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Cream + eggtop 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).

Cream and egg 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 and add richness as they set gently over heat.
Cream
Adds fat and whipped volume, giving the frozen parfait a light, smooth texture.
Maple syrup
Provides sweetness and maple flavor to the custard base.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until it thickens. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but overheating can scramble them. Cooking gently over a double boiler while stirring constantly keeps the custard smooth before it is cooled and folded into the cream.

“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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