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Vanilla Parfait
Boil 1 cupful of sugar with 1/4 cupful of water until it is a smooth syrup (about ten minutes). Beat the yolks of 8 eggs until light, add the syrup, and cook over a slow fire, stirring constantly, until the mixture forms a thick, creamy coating on the spoon. When taken from the fire, add 1 teaspoonful of vanilla. Turn it into a bowl and beat with a Dover egg-beater until cold. It will then be very light. When entirely cold add 1 pint of cream whipped very stiff. Stir lightly together, and turn the mixture into a mould. Cover with a thin paper before putting on the cover, pack in ice and salt for four hours. This makes 1 quart. Chocolate or coffee parfait is made in a like manner, substituting the desired flavoring as for ice cream.
This is a classic still-frozen parfait: a cooked yolk-and-syrup base lightened with whipped cream, frozen without churning. The hinge is the custard stage -- if the yolks scramble, nothing later will save the texture.
- The syrupOne cupful of sugar to a quarter cupful of water, boiled for ten minutes, will carry well past a thread and into the soft-ball range or beyond; the recipe's only test is visual, so watch the pan rather than trust the clock. Pour it into the yolks in a thin stream while beating, or the eggs will set in lumps.
- "A slow fire"Low heat, and constant stirring. The mixture coats the spoon at about 170-180F; past 185F the yolks curdle. A heavy pan or a bowl over barely simmering water gives you more margin.
- Dover egg-beaterA hand-cranked rotary beater, standard American equipment when this was written. A stand mixer on medium-high does the same work; beat until the base is entirely cold, at which point it will be very light, as the recipe says.
- Cream"Cream" here means heavy or whipping cream, roughly 30 per cent fat or more. Whip it to stiff peaks but stop short of graininess, and fold rather than stir so the air survives.
- Ice and saltThe traditional pack is about three parts crushed ice to one part rock salt, which drops the brine well below freezing. A modern freezer does the job unattended; allow six hours or more, since it works less aggressively than a salt pack.
- The thin paperIt seals the mould so salt water cannot seep under the lid. If you are freezing in a loaf pan, press plastic wrap directly onto the surface instead, to keep ice crystals off the top.
- No churningThe whipped cream and beaten yolk foam supply all the aeration, so this freezes solid without an ice-cream machine. Let it stand ten minutes at room temperature before unmoulding and slicing.
- YieldOne quart, as stated -- six to eight servings. Eight yolks is a large number for that volume, which is what gives parfait its dense, silky body.
Parfait is simply French for "perfect," and in French usage it names essentially this preparation: a still-frozen dessert built on a cooked sugar-syrup-and-yolk base, folded with whipped cream and frozen in a tall mould without stirring. Because it needs no churn and no dasher, it could be made without tying up an ice-cream freezer, and late nineteenth-century American collections file it beside the churned creams and water ices. The Dover egg-beater was a geared rotary beater sold under that name from about 1870 onward and was a common American hand tool; cookbook writers often used the brand name generically. Since it stayed on the market for decades, the mention dates the recipe only loosely. The word travelled oddly in the United States, where by the twentieth century "parfait" more often meant layered ice cream and syrup served in a tall glass rather than the moulded custard described here.