Home › The Principles of Cookery › German Cream
German Cream
This delicacy should be made in the evening of the day before it is wanted. Put half a pint of cream into a saucepan, with two table-spoonfuls of sugar and the thinly-cut rind of half a lemon. Let it stand near the fire for half an hour, to draw out the flavour of the lemon, then bring it quickly to a boil, strain it, let it grow cold, and add the juice of the lemon, with three table-spoonfuls of brandy. Pour the cream quickly backwards and forwards from one jug to another, from a good height, for twenty minutes, then put it into the dish in which it is to be served. Probable cost, 10d., exclusive of the brandy. Sufficient for nearly three-quarters of a pint of cream.
A cold lemon-and-brandy cream that thickens by acid and aeration rather than by gelatine or eggs. Everything hangs on the temperature at which the lemon juice goes in.
- The hinge: cream must be properly coldThe lemon juice and brandy go into cream that has been boiled and then cooled completely, ideally to refrigerator temperature. Add acid to warm cream and it curdles into grains instead of thickening smoothly.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups or 285 ml. Use heavy or double cream at 36 per cent butterfat or above; single cream and half-and-half will not thicken.
- The twenty minutes of pouringPouring from a height between two jugs both aerates the cream and works the acid through it, which is what gives the finished dish its body. A whisk or a mixer on low does the same job in a fraction of the time, but stop the moment it holds a soft ribbon or it turns to butter.
- Steeping the rind"Near the fire" means a warm infusion, not a hot one. Hold the cream and pared zest at hand-warm for half an hour, then bring to a boil and strain out the peel. Pare the zest thinly so no white pith goes in.
- Two tablespoons of sugarVictorian spoon measures were not standardised and may have been somewhat larger than the modern 15 ml tablespoon. About 30 g of caster sugar is a reasonable starting point; taste after the lemon juice is in, since the acid makes it read drier.
- Overnight in the coldThe instruction to make it the evening before is not decoration. The cream continues to firm as it chills, and it needs several hours covered in the refrigerator to reach its final set.
- YieldThe recipe gives 'nearly three-quarters of a pint' of finished cream, enough for three or four at this richness. It is a rich end to a meal rather than a bowl to be dished out.
- The brandyThree tablespoons in this quantity of cream is assertive, and it is excluded from the stated cost of 10d. It can probably be reduced without much affecting the body of the cream, which comes chiefly from the lemon juice and the aeration.
Cold creams of this kind sat between the syllabub and the moulded blancmange in the Victorian dessert repertoire: no gelatine, no eggs, just cream that is soured and beaten until it holds. The name is loose. "German cream" in nineteenth-century English cookery books seems rarely to point to a specific German original, and the label appears to have been applied to any rich cream dessert thought to have a continental air. What may be older here is the technique of pouring liquid from a height between vessels, a habit English cooks are often said to have used for cooling and frothing long before whisks were the default tool. Cassell's inclusion of a probable cost in pence, with the brandy excluded, is typical of the book's audience: households running to a cook but keeping an eye on the weekly bill.