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Cream, Clottfd
Clotted cream, usually called Devonshire cream, is sold in the London markets in small brown jugs, and is exceedingly delicious when eaten with fresh fruit. It is made by putting the milk into a large metal pan, and allowing it to stand without moving it for some hours, twenty-four in winter, twelve in summer. The pan is then placed on a stove, or over a very slow fire, and some distance above it, so that it will heat without boiling or even simmering until a solid mass forms on the top. The pan should be then taken to the cool dairy, and the cream lifted off when cold. Time, the slower the better. Probable cost, 6d. for a small jug.
This is a method rather than a formula: no quantities, no temperature, only the instruction to heat slowly and never let the milk move. The numbers below are what that translates to on a modern hob or in a modern oven.
- The hinge: heat, never simmerClotted cream is generally made at around 175-180F held for several hours. Much hotter and the surface tends to skin and brown and the texture can turn grainy; a genuine simmer ruins it. An oven that will hold a very low setting is easier to control than a burner and a trivet, though not every oven will go as low as 180F.
- Milk versus creamThe recipe assumes whole raw milk that will throw a thick cream line on standing. Most modern retail milk is homogenised and will not separate, so unless you can get non-homogenised milk, start instead with heavy or double cream, 36% fat or higher.
- Avoid ultra-pasteurisedUHT and ultra-pasteurised cream has been heated past the point where it will clot properly and often refuses to form a crust at all. Look for cream labelled simply pasteurised, and non-homogenised if you can find it.
- The 12-24 hour standThat initial rest is there only to let the cream rise on raw milk, and leaving raw dairy at room temperature for a day is not something to reproduce. Working from cream, skip the stand entirely and go straight to the slow heat.
- VesselA wide shallow pan gives more surface for the crust to form on. Depth of 1 1/2 to 2 inches of cream is about right; a deep narrow pot produces a thin skin over a lot of unchanged cream.
- "Taken to the cool dairy"Cool the pan to room temperature undisturbed, then refrigerate 8 hours or overnight before lifting the crust off. Skimming while warm tears it and mixes the thin milk back in.
- Time and yieldReckon 10-12 hours at 180F, then the overnight chill. A quart of double cream yields roughly 1 1/2 to 2 cups of clotted cream plus a little thin liquid, which is useful in scones or bread.
- KeepingRefrigerate and use within about four days. There is no preservative here beyond the fat and the long scald.
Clotted cream is a West Country product, and "Devonshire cream" was the trade name it travelled under: made in the dairies of Devon and Cornwall, packed in the small brown jugs this entry describes, and sold in London, which is why a book aimed at metropolitan households treats it as something bought rather than something ordinarily made at home. The technique is old and ordinary dairy practice rather than an invention: scalding the pan of milk over a slack fire was a way of raising the cream and keeping it a few days longer than sweet cream would last, and the crust that forms is largely fat together with milk protein. Both counties have long claimed it as their own, and the pairing with fresh fruit here sits alongside the ritual of the cream tea with scones and jam that is often said to define it, though that history is largely undated tradition. The sixpenny jug puts it firmly in the class of small luxuries: not dear, but bought for pleasure rather than for the store cupboard.