Cream
The one thing that prompted me to write "Settling In France - A Household Guide and Cookery Book", was the subject of cream, and the question that comes up time and time again, "where can you buy double cream in France?".
The first thing I learnt when I asked the same question is that to all intents and purposes it does not exist in France unless you are lucky to live near a proper Cremerie, and even then you may well not get any. The normal answer was to buy some "Fleurette" and mix it 50 / 50 with Mascarpone. The Fleurette in question is ‘Crème Fleurette de Normandie Entière’., which has about 30% m.g. This does work so long as you keep everything cold, very cold, whilst whipping and later when the creation you have made might be sitting on a table for an hours or so. Addition of a proprietary product "Chantifix" is said to make it hold better if you don't mind the extra sweetening.
For those of us who love double cream - which is 48% m.g. this is just not the same, The recent appearance of Creme "PRO" (for Professionals) is 35% m.g. - getting better but not perfect. For a photoshoot of Scones with whipped cream, I whipped up (rather more stiffly than I would normally) 50/50 Creme Pro with mascarpone. It looked OK in the photos, but later when we were clearing up, perhaps an hour or so later, I noticed clear water in the bottom of the cream bowl - not great if you've got to make something that needs to stand outside the fridge for a while.
I recently invited some elderly French neighbours for English Tea - dished up finger sandwiches - cucumber and salmon, egg and tomato - followed by scones with jam and clotted cream. They could not get their heads around this and said as far as they were concerned it was pretty much the equivalent of Buerre doux. Clotted cream is 55% m.g and standard butter is 82%. These days you can get "lite" versions of butter that are almost equivalent in mg to clotted cream.
For them it was difficult to see why anyone would want cream with a high-fat content- Isn't it bad for you? that's what "they've" been saying for the last 50 years. Which of course is true, but for the last several years the health boffins have discovered that butter is not bad for you after all - it is even better for you than oils which are 100% fat. But there is a demand for what the French call milk spreads 'laitières à tartiner', which only contain about 40%mg for those of us on diets or still listening to the old advice. The problem here is you are buying more water and the additives used to stabilise the spread.
Now that we are told that butter is OK healthwise to eat, we are being told to reduce our intake of red meat, and therefore dairy, because of global warming. Apparently farming cows is one of the worst contributors to global warming. Butter is derived from cows, so I guess that is for the chop as well. There is a big difference between the butter produced from cows farmed out in the meadows, to cows grown is sheds all their lives without access to grass. High-fat dairy products from grass-fed cows are among the best sources of Vitamin K2 in the diet. While K1 is important in blood clotting, vitamin K2 helps to keep calcium out of your arteries, so perhaps we need to be more careful about assessing the origin of our cream, butter and cheese. For instance, Gouda made in the Netherlands is high in K2 whereas Gouda made in the USA is very low, due to the way in which the cows are fed.
Going back to "cream", the French routinely translate "creme fraiche" to fresh cream. But in reality creme fraiche is cultured, and that's one of the things that enables it to be kept for longer, and what the British call fresh cream is closer to what they call creme cru, or raw cream in France. Many folks are happy to have creme fraiche instead. They are likely the ones who will happily substitute creme fraiche for "sour cream" which is more popular in the USA.
So, if you grew up loving chocolate eclairs filled with freshly whipped cream in the UK, you will have to get used to Chocolate eclairs filled with thick custard (creme patisserie) in France. They do make it very well and without too much sweetening. Unlike that awful fizzy cream out of a can they like to call chantilly cream used in cheap restaurants to make dodgy sweets look crazy nice. The kids love it, and it requires no effort and can (and has to be) applied at the last minute, as it does fade quickly when it gets at all warm.
The first thing I learnt when I asked the same question is that to all intents and purposes it does not exist in France unless you are lucky to live near a proper Cremerie, and even then you may well not get any. The normal answer was to buy some "Fleurette" and mix it 50 / 50 with Mascarpone. The Fleurette in question is ‘Crème Fleurette de Normandie Entière’., which has about 30% m.g. This does work so long as you keep everything cold, very cold, whilst whipping and later when the creation you have made might be sitting on a table for an hours or so. Addition of a proprietary product "Chantifix" is said to make it hold better if you don't mind the extra sweetening.
For those of us who love double cream - which is 48% m.g. this is just not the same, The recent appearance of Creme "PRO" (for Professionals) is 35% m.g. - getting better but not perfect. For a photoshoot of Scones with whipped cream, I whipped up (rather more stiffly than I would normally) 50/50 Creme Pro with mascarpone. It looked OK in the photos, but later when we were clearing up, perhaps an hour or so later, I noticed clear water in the bottom of the cream bowl - not great if you've got to make something that needs to stand outside the fridge for a while.
I recently invited some elderly French neighbours for English Tea - dished up finger sandwiches - cucumber and salmon, egg and tomato - followed by scones with jam and clotted cream. They could not get their heads around this and said as far as they were concerned it was pretty much the equivalent of Buerre doux. Clotted cream is 55% m.g and standard butter is 82%. These days you can get "lite" versions of butter that are almost equivalent in mg to clotted cream.
For them it was difficult to see why anyone would want cream with a high-fat content- Isn't it bad for you? that's what "they've" been saying for the last 50 years. Which of course is true, but for the last several years the health boffins have discovered that butter is not bad for you after all - it is even better for you than oils which are 100% fat. But there is a demand for what the French call milk spreads 'laitières à tartiner', which only contain about 40%mg for those of us on diets or still listening to the old advice. The problem here is you are buying more water and the additives used to stabilise the spread.
Now that we are told that butter is OK healthwise to eat, we are being told to reduce our intake of red meat, and therefore dairy, because of global warming. Apparently farming cows is one of the worst contributors to global warming. Butter is derived from cows, so I guess that is for the chop as well. There is a big difference between the butter produced from cows farmed out in the meadows, to cows grown is sheds all their lives without access to grass. High-fat dairy products from grass-fed cows are among the best sources of Vitamin K2 in the diet. While K1 is important in blood clotting, vitamin K2 helps to keep calcium out of your arteries, so perhaps we need to be more careful about assessing the origin of our cream, butter and cheese. For instance, Gouda made in the Netherlands is high in K2 whereas Gouda made in the USA is very low, due to the way in which the cows are fed.
Going back to "cream", the French routinely translate "creme fraiche" to fresh cream. But in reality creme fraiche is cultured, and that's one of the things that enables it to be kept for longer, and what the British call fresh cream is closer to what they call creme cru, or raw cream in France. Many folks are happy to have creme fraiche instead. They are likely the ones who will happily substitute creme fraiche for "sour cream" which is more popular in the USA.
So, if you grew up loving chocolate eclairs filled with freshly whipped cream in the UK, you will have to get used to Chocolate eclairs filled with thick custard (creme patisserie) in France. They do make it very well and without too much sweetening. Unlike that awful fizzy cream out of a can they like to call chantilly cream used in cheap restaurants to make dodgy sweets look crazy nice. The kids love it, and it requires no effort and can (and has to be) applied at the last minute, as it does fade quickly when it gets at all warm.
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