Skip to main content
Dessert

Maple Parfait

A chilled dessert made from egg yolks, maple syrup, lemon juice, and whipped cream set in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 custard

  1. In a double boiler, combine egg yolks, maple syrup, and lemon juice.

  2. Cook until thick, then beat until cold.

Assemble

  1. Gently fold in the whipped cream.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered 3-pint mold.

  3. Cover with a buttered piece of paper and place the lid on.

Freeze

  1. Pack the mold in ice and salt 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. Maple syrup + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together607 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Egg + maple syruptop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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 their proteins set with gentle heat.
Maple syrup
Provides the main sweetness and the distinctive maple flavor.
Whipped cream
Adds air and fat, giving the frozen parfait a light, creamy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds a little acidity that brightens the sweet maple flavor.

The step that matters

Cook until thick over the double boiler. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with gentle, indirect heat. Too much heat can scramble them into lumps, so keeping the water below a hard boil and stirring steadily gives a smooth custard that holds the cream well.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, maple syrup, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pumpkinfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, maple syrup, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes