Fred Santley
WM. HODGE
MAPLE PARFAIT
1 cup maple syrup 1 pint cream Heat syrup, add slowly the beaten yolks of eggs.
Cook until mixture thickens. Remove quickly from 6 eggs 1 pinch of salt stove and beat until cold. Whip cream and add to custard. Pour into a mold and freeze three or four hours.
This will serve six people. very Truly yours Am Hoelge
A still-frozen custard in the old French manner: no churning, no ice cream maker, just a cooked yolk base lightened with whipped cream. Everything depends on the custard being cooked gently and cooled completely before the cream goes in.
- The hinge: do not scramble the yolksThe recipe has you heat the syrup and add the beaten yolks (with the pinch of salt) to it slowly; whisk constantly as you do, or reverse the order and stream the hot syrup into the yolks. Cook gently over low heat or a water bath until it coats a spoon -- roughly 170-175F; much hotter and it will curdle.
- "Beat until cold"This is not optional. An electric mixer on medium for 5-8 minutes will do it, or set the bowl over ice water while beating. Warm custard will deflate the whipped cream and you will get a dense, icy block.
- QuantitiesOne pint of cream is 2 cups, which whips to roughly a quart. Use heavy or whipping cream at 36% fat or better, whipped to soft peaks only, and fold rather than stir.
- Maple syrupOne cup of pure syrup is the only sugar in the dish, so grade matters: a dark, robust grade gives the maple flavour the recipe is named for. Pancake syrup made from corn syrup and flavouring will taste flat and thin.
- Freezing timeThree or four hours presumably assumes a mold packed in ice and salt, which is not the same as a modern freezer at 0F. Expect 6 hours to overnight in a covered loaf pan or metal mold, and let it stand 10 minutes before unmolding.
- No churning neededThe beaten custard and whipped cream carry enough air that the mixture freezes smooth without agitation. There is no need for an ice cream machine; churning would give a different texture from the still-frozen parfait intended here.
- YieldServes six generously as written, closer to eight in small glasses. It is very rich, so smaller portions are the kinder choice.
A parfait in the French sense is a frozen egg-yolk custard folded with whipped cream and frozen without stirring -- the name means simply "perfect," and it appears to predate the American soda-fountain sundae that later borrowed the word. Substituting maple syrup for the usual sugar syrup is a distinctly North American move, and it turns up in early twentieth-century American cookery. Recipes like this one, contributed with a facsimile signature, belong to the vogue for celebrity charity cookbooks in which actors of the day supplied a favourite dish.