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Dessert

Maple Parfait

A chilled dessert made with maple syrup, eggs, cream, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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. Beat the yolks of the eggs.

  2. Mix the beaten yolks with maple syrup.

  3. Place the mixture in a double boiler over heat.

  4. Beat the mixture until thick.

Finish and freeze

  1. Whip the cream.

  2. Fold the whipped cream into the beaten egg whites.

  3. Combine the whipped cream mixture with the egg mixture.

  4. Sweeten if necessary.

  5. Freeze the mixture as you would ice cream.

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 + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Maple syrup + sugartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  5. 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
Yolks thicken when gently heated, giving the parfait a custard-like body.
Maple syrup
Provides the main sweetness and maple flavor.
Cream
Whipped, it traps air and adds richness and a light texture.

The step that matters

Heating the yolks in the double boiler until thick. Egg yolk proteins set when heated, so gentle, indirect heat is needed to thicken the mixture smoothly. Too much heat can scramble the yolks into lumps.

“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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