Home › Dainty Dishes › Maple Parfait (Yolks of four eggs)
Maple Parfait (Yolks of four eggs)
Yolks of four eggs, three-fourths of a cupful of maple syrup, one pint of sweet cream well whipped. Beat the yolks until very light, add syrup slowly, mixing well. Place over fire in double boiler until it thickens enough to coat the spoon well. Remove and beat with beater until cold. It will, or should be, very light. When quite cold, add the whipped cream. Mix well and put in mould and pack in freezer for four hours without turning freezer. This will fill about a three-pint mould.
A still-frozen parfait: a cooked yolk-and-syrup base lightened with whipped cream and frozen without churning. The whole method hinges on getting the custard cold and airy before the cream goes in.
- "Sweet cream"Means fresh, unsoured cream, not sweetened. Use heavy or whipping cream, whipped to soft peaks so it still folds smoothly.
- Custard temperature"Thickens enough to coat the spoon" is conventionally reckoned at around 170-175F; the recipe itself gives no figure. Push much beyond that and the yolks can curdle and the base turn grainy, so keep the water below a boil and stir constantly.
- Beating until coldThis is the aeration step and it takes ten minutes or more with a hand mixer. Setting the bowl in ice water while beating speeds it considerably and keeps the volume.
- Maple syrupThree-quarters of a cup of true syrup, not pancake syrup, which is corn syrup with flavouring and will taste flat here. A darker grade gives more maple character.
- "Pack in freezer"At the time this meant burying the sealed mould in a wooden ice-cream freezer packed with cracked ice and coarse salt, with the dasher left out. A modern freezer at 0F does the same job: cover the mould tightly and leave it undisturbed.
- TimingFour hours is a minimum for a three-pint mould; six hours or overnight sets it more firmly. Because there is no churning and no stabiliser, it is best eaten within a day or two before ice crystals coarsen.
- Unmoulding and yieldThree pints serves eight to ten. Dip the mould briefly in warm water and invert; let the parfait stand a few minutes before slicing, as it cuts cleanly but eats better slightly softened.
- Worth addingA pinch of salt in the custard sharpens the maple noticeably. The original carries no flavouring beyond the syrup itself.
The parfait reached American cookbooks from French practice, where parfait, "perfect," described a frozen cream stiff enough to hold a mould without being churned like ice cream. American versions of the 1890s and 1900s commonly follow this pattern: a yolk base cooked with a hot syrup, beaten cold, folded into whipped cream, then packed in the ice-and-salt freezer with the dasher removed. Maple was a natural flavouring in households that made their own syrup, and a maple parfait let a cook show off good syrup without the labour of turning a crank.