Cream Tea Café

Clotted cream

Making clotted cream is traditionally a long, slow process. For those interested in obtaining clotted cream the hard way, I found this recipe in the book Food in England, by Dorothy Hartley.

“Take the night’s milk and put it into a broad earthenware pan and in the morning set over a slow fire, letting it stand there from morning till night, suffering it not to boil, only heat.
“Then take off the fire and set in some place to cool all night and next morning dish off your cream and it will be very thick.”

A similar recipe from a genuine Cornish woman, Connie, is more detailed, and has answers to comments as well. Her recipe and the one above would be made using unpasteurised, whole milk, of course. I can’t really recommend you try this, as I don’t think consuming unpasteurised products is a good idea, especially for pregnant women. Also, it instructs the reader to leave the milk out overnight, which other receipes include as a step prior to heating, neither of which sound very safe with dairy products. I would rather leave it to companies with adequate quality assurance departments.

A more modern recipe which sounds a bit more sanitary can be found on cooksrecipes.com, and although the author thinks that devonshire cream is synonymous with clotted cream, the formula provided just might work.

There are many recipes for fake clotted cream, which may pass for someone who’s never tried the real thing. I found one such recipe online at joyofbaking.com, but given that Ms Jaworski’s dairy descriptions are quite erroneous, I wouldn’t trust her culinary advice. A recipe using whipping cream, marscapone, sugar and vanilla surely has no place near a description of neither clotted nor devonshire cream. I am quite certain that the resulting concoction would go quite nicely on fresh fruit or baked desserts, but I will be keeping it away from my scone, thank you.

Other mock clotted creams include sugar, maybe to satisfy the American addiction to the refined white stuff, but it is redundant here. Also, sour cream can in no way imitate clotted cream, so stay away from recipes that suggest using it.

Dairy substitutes

If you find yourself  short of dairy products, here is an interesting substitute for milk and cream from the book “English 18th Century Cookery:”

“Beat up the whole of a fresh egg, in a basin, and then pour boiling tea over it gradually, to prevent its curdling. Its is difficult from the taste to distinguish the composition from rich cream.”

I have to admit, I haven’t tried this one myself, but I can’t imagine that this recipe will produce anything other than tea-flavoured egg.