Skip to main content
Dessert

Maple Parfait

A chilled dessert made from maple sugar, beaten eggs, and whipped heavy cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Maple Parfait

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the maple sugar in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. Pour the hot maple sugar slowly into the beaten eggs, stirring constantly.

  3. Cook the mixture in a double boiler until it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon.

  4. Remove from heat immediately to prevent curdling and let it cool.

Whip and freeze

  1. Whip the heavy cream until stiff peaks form.

  2. Once the egg mixture is cool, fold it into the whipped cream.

  3. Pack the mixture into a mold or pound baking powder cans to freeze, or use a freezer without a dasher.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Eggs
Thicken the custard as they cook and give the parfait its rich structure.
Maple sugar
Provides sweetness and maple flavor to the custard.
Heavy cream
Whipped to stiff peaks, it adds lightness and a creamy texture to the frozen dessert.

The step that matters

Cook the custard gently in a double boiler. Egg proteins set and thicken at moderate heat but scramble and curdle if overheated. Cooking gently until the custard coats a spoon, then removing it from heat promptly, keeps it smooth.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes