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Maple Parfait
It is perfect. If you will follow these directions carefully you will have the most perfect thing ever set out on a soda counter. Yolks only of 8 eggs, ever set out on a soda counter. Yolks only of 8 eggs, 1 pound maple sugar, 1 pound maple sugar, 1 pint well whipped sweet cream, 1 ounce water. Beat eggs stiff, melt maple sugar in a double boiler with 1 ounce of water, add the hot syrup to the beaten yolks, stirring constantly. Put in double boiler and cook , stirring constantly, until it will stick to a spoon. Remove and cool. When cold add the whipped cream mixing gently. Put in a can, fill to overflowing , cover top with a thick piece of paper brushed with melted butter, placing unbuttered side against the cream, adjust cover tightly. Pack in a tub entirely surrounded by cracked ice and salt in equal parts, cover and set aside 4 or 5 hours to freeze. The buttered paper will absolutely prevent the entrance of salt or water and enable you to remove cover easily. Serve in a cocktail glass with spoonful of whipped cream.
A still-frozen parfait in the older sense: a cooked yolk-and-syrup base lightened with whipped cream and frozen without churning. Two lines are duplicated in the original printing, an artifact of the typesetting rather than a doubled quantity.
- The duplicated lines"Yolks only of 8 eggs" and "1 pound maple sugar" each appear twice. Use 8 yolks and 1 pound of maple sugar total.
- MeasuresOne ounce of water is 2 tablespoons, just enough to keep the sugar from scorching as it melts. One pint of cream whips to roughly a quart.
- Maple sugarHard cake or granulated maple sugar, still sold by weight from producers in Vermont, Quebec and upstate New York. Pure maple syrup is not a straight substitute here, since the recipe depends on the low water content of the sugar.
- "Beat eggs stiff"Yolks will not go stiff in the sense whites do. Beat them pale, thick and ribbon-forming, then add the hot syrup in a slow stream so they temper rather than scramble.
- Cooking the baseOver the double boiler, stop when the mixture coats the back of a spoon and holds a drawn line, around 170-175F. Past that the yolks curdle and no amount of stirring brings them back.
- Fold cold into coldThe base must be fully cold before the cream goes in, or the cream deflates and the parfait freezes dense. Fold, do not beat.
- Freezing without a machineThis is a still-frozen dessert; the whipped cream supplies the air an ice cream churn would. Equal parts cracked ice and coarse salt drops the brine far below the freezing point -- a salt-saturated ice bath bottoms out at around -6F -- which is why 4 to 5 hours is enough. A modern freezer will do the same work overnight in a covered loaf pan, though a little slower.
- The buttered paperThe one detail worth keeping. Filling the can to overflowing leaves no air pocket, and paper laid butter-side out seals the rim against the salt brine, which would otherwise seep in and ruin the whole batch.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 quarts, or 10 to 12 servings in the small footed glasses a fountain would have used.
"Parfait" is simply the French for perfect, and the confidence of the opening line, It is perfect, is a fair sample of soda-fountain trade writing. The construction here, cooked egg yolks beaten with hot syrup and folded into whipped cream, then frozen still rather than churned, is the classic parfait method, and it survives in the pâte à bombe base used in frozen mousses today. Maple sugar gave northeastern fountains a flavor they could claim as local; it was cheap and plentiful in New England and Quebec in the sugaring season, and it appears constantly in American ice cream and confectionery books of the period. The tub of cracked ice and salt points to a fountain working without mechanical cooling, though ice-and-salt freezing remained in routine use alongside iceboxes and, later, mechanical plant, so it is no proof of date; the buttered-paper trick is the practical answer to the problem the brine bath created.