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Maple Parfait
6 egg yolks. 3/4 cup maple syrup. 2 cups whipped cream. Beat yolks very light, add maple sirup, cook in double boiler until makes a thick coating on spoon. Pour into mold and whip light with wire egg whip; when cold, fold in cream and one cup caramel powder, and pack in salt and ice. Candied fruits may be added in same way as powder.
A still-frozen parfait in the older American sense: a cooked yolk-and-syrup base lightened with whipped cream and frozen without churning. Nothing here needs updating except the equipment and a few unstated quantities.
- Cook the custard to temperature, not to timeThe yolk-and-syrup mixture is done at 170-180F, when it coats the back of a spoon and a drawn finger leaves a clear track. Past about 185F the yolks scramble and no amount of whipping will smooth them out.
- Caramel powderMelt sugar to a deep amber caramel, pour it onto an oiled slab or parchment, let it set hard, then crush or grind it fine. One cup of the powder is a lot of sweetness on top of the syrup; a half cup is enough for most palates.
- Whip the base while it coolsMrs. Wilson has you pour the hot custard into the mold and beat it with a wire whip. That aeration is the whole structure of the dessert, since it is never churned. Beat until it is cool, pale and light, then fold in the cream.
- Whipped creamTwo cups most likely means two cups measured after whipping, to soft peaks that just hold their shape. Overbeaten cream will not fold in cleanly and gives a grainy, buttery texture once frozen.
- "Pack in salt and ice"Bury the covered mold in a bucket of crushed ice mixed with rock salt, roughly three parts ice to one part salt by volume, and drain the brine as it forms. A modern freezer does the same job; allow four to six hours, and press plastic film onto the surface.
- Mold and unmoldingA metal mold with a tight lid keeps brine out and freezes fastest. Dip it briefly in warm water and invert onto a chilled plate.
- YieldAbout a quart to a quart and a half, serving six to ten. The high proportion of syrup and fat keeps it soft enough to serve straight from the freezer.
- Candied fruitsChop them small and fold them in with the cream. Large pieces freeze into hard nuggets that resist the spoon.
Parfait entered American cookbooks from French ice-cream making, where a parfait is a still-frozen mousse built on a cooked egg-yolk base rather than a churned custard, but the mixture of yolks, syrup and whipped cream frozen in a mold became thoroughly domestic here by the turn of the twentieth century. Mary A. Wilson wrote for the Ladies' Home Journal and her books date from the years around the First World War, when refined sugar was the object of voluntary conservation campaigns and household cooks were urged to lean on maple syrup, honey and molasses instead; a dessert sweetened entirely with maple syrup and caramelized sugar fits that moment exactly. The salt-and-ice packing is the older method of freezing without agitation, which is why the recipe insists on whipping air into the hot base first: with no dasher turning, the volume has to be built by hand before the mixture ever goes cold.