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Dessert

Maple Parfait

A chilled dessert made from beaten egg yolks, maple syrup, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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. Beat the egg yolks until very light.

  2. Add the maple syrup and place in a double boiler.

  3. Stir constantly until the mixture thickens.

  4. Transfer to a cold bowl and beat with a wire whisk until light and creamy.

Freeze

  1. Fold in the whipped cream and pack the mixture in ice and salt for four 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. 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 and add richness as they set gently over heat.
Whipped cream
Adds air and fat, keeping the frozen parfait light and creamy rather than dense.
Maple syrup
Provides the main sweetness and maple flavour, and helps keep the parfait soft when frozen.

The step that matters

Stir constantly over the double boiler. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they get too hot. Constant stirring over gentle, indirect heat lets the mixture thicken smoothly into a custard.

“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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