Crème Anglaise

The mother sauce of French dessert: silky vanilla-bean custard poured warm over tarts, puddings, poached fruit, and anything that needs it

Origin: France

From the journey of Vanilla.

The French named it 'English cream', crème anglaise, for the English habit of serving a pouring custard alongside puddings and pies, a tradition the French observed and then elevated into a sauce of such technical precision that it became a test of every young cook's classical training. In Escoffier's kitchen hierarchy, the ability to cook a crème anglaise without scrambling it, to hold the custard at exactly the right temperature as it thickens on the spoon, distinguished the trained pâtissier from the amateur. The test is the nappe test: drag your finger across the back of the wooden spoon coated in the sauce; if the line holds clean, the anglaise is done. A second too long and the eggs scramble; too short and it is thin as cream. Vanilla is not optional in a crème anglaise; it is the sauce's entire reason for existing. Without vanilla, it is merely cooked egg and cream. With a real vanilla pod, it is one of the great French sauces: warm, flowing, fragrant, and the foundation of ice cream, mousses, trifles, floating islands, and a hundred other preparations.

Ingredients

custard

  • 500 ml whole milk
  • 6 egg yolks
  • 120 g caster (superfine) sugar

vanilla

  • 1 vanilla pod, split and scraped

seasoning

  • 1 pinch fine sea salt

Method

  1. Pour the milk into a heavy saucepan. Add the vanilla pod and seeds. Heat over medium heat until the milk is just steaming; small bubbles at the edges, not boiling. Remove from heat and infuse for 10 minutes.
  2. In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks, sugar, and salt together until pale and slightly thickened, about 1 minute.
  3. Remove the vanilla pod. Pour the warm milk in a thin, steady stream onto the yolk mixture while whisking constantly. This is tempering: raising the egg temperature gradually so they don't scramble.
  4. Return the mixture to the saucepan over low-medium heat. Cook, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon or heatproof spatula in a figure-of-eight pattern, covering the entire base of the pan.
  5. Cook until the custard thickens enough to coat the back of the spoon and a finger drawn across the coated spoon leaves a clean, unbroken line; the nappe test. The temperature should read 82-84°C (180-183°F) on an instant-read thermometer.
  6. Immediately strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a clean jug or bowl set over ice. Stir briefly to cool it quickly and arrest cooking.
  7. Serve warm alongside tarts, puddings, poached fruits, or warm chocolate cake. Or cover with cling film pressed directly onto the surface (to prevent a skin forming) and refrigerate until needed; reheat gently in a bowl over simmering water.

Notes

Crème anglaise is the mother of ice cream (churn it) and the base of bavarian cream, trifle, and floating islands. If the sauce does accidentally curdle, immediately transfer to a blender and blitz on high for 30 seconds: the emulsification often rescues a slightly grainy sauce. For a richer version, substitute 250ml of the milk with double cream.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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