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Dessert

Maple Parfait

A chilled dessert made with maple syrup, gelatin, egg yolks, whipped cream, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 base

  1. Boil the maple syrup.

  2. Dissolve the gelatine in ¼ cup boiling water and add it to the syrup.

  3. Beat the egg yolks well and slowly add them to the syrup mixture.

  4. Remove from heat as soon as it boils and let it cool.

Finish and set

  1. Whip the cream until very stiff and fold it into the mixture.

  2. Add the nuts and pour the mixture into a mold.

  3. Set the mold on ice for 6 hours.

  4. Serve with Maraschino cherries.

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. Meat + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Cream + meattop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,248 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Maple syrup + eggtop 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

Maple syrup
Provides the main sweetness and the characteristic maple flavour.
Cream
Whipped to air, it gives the parfait a light, smooth, rich texture.
Gelatine
Sets the mixture so it holds its shape when chilled and sliced.
Egg yolks
Add richness and body, thickening the syrup base as it cools.
Rolled nut meats
Add a crunchy texture and nutty flavour against the smooth custard.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the hot syrup. Yolks added too quickly to hot syrup can scramble. Beating them well and adding them slowly, while stirring, gently warms and thickens them evenly.

“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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