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Home › Introducing the Great Fuel Foods: Fats › Introducing the Great Fuel Foods: Fats: Cream
Introducing the Great Fuel Foods: Fats: Cream
CREAM Both cream and cream transformed into butter are considered particularly digestible forms of fat. The volume of a certain quantity of cream is increased by beating. This process, probably, renders the cream a little more digestible, as it also makes it more attractive. Cream taken from the top of the milk can, or after the milk has stood about twelve hours, is called thin, or single cream. Such cream cannot be beaten very firm; it contains too much milk and is not thick enough. Cream taken from milk that has been standing twenty-four hours is called double, heavy or thick cream. This may be beaten "to stand alone," or until it is solid to the bottom of the bowl. Thin cream is beaten with a whip churn; this contains a dasher, which is moved up and down in the cylinder. The froth is removed as it rises to the surface. Thick cream may be beaten most quickly with a Dover egg beater. To keep the cream from "spattering," cover the bowl with a circular sheet of paper, and let the top of the beater emerge from a hole in the center.
TO THICKEN THIN CREAM Pasteurized or other thin cream may be thickened by a solution of lime in sugar (viscogen) and then whipped to a stiff froth with a Dover egg beater. To make the viscogen, dissolve five ounces of sugar in ten ounces of water. Add six ounces of cold water to two ounces of quicklime, and let it gradually slake; then strain through a fine sieve to remove unslaked particles; combine the two liquids and shake occasionally for two hours. In three hours set the mixture aside to settle, then siphon, or pour off, the clear liquid. Store in small bottles, filling each full and stoppering tight as the liquid absorbs carbonic acid from the air, thus darkening the color and reducing the strength. Use one-fourth a teaspoonful of viscogen to three-fourths a cup of chilled cream. Stir the cream while adding the viscogen to it. BUTTER The cooking of butter detracts from its digestibility; thus, when it is to be used on vegetables, broiled meats, fish, etc., the heat it receives from the article upon which it is served will suffice. Butter is very quickly affected by heat, and will burn more quickly than other forms of fat; on this account, great care needs to be taken in its use for frying purposes. For this reason, and also on account of expense, some other form of fat is usually selected for cooking articles in the frying pan. When butter is to be used for frying, let it heat until all froth has subsided, the casein, salt, etc., has been deposited on the bottom of the dish, and the water has evaporated. The liquid fat may then be poured from the sediment and will keep almost indefinitely. By beating butter with a perforated wooden spoon or a silver fork, air is incorporated, which lightens it. In cake making this is an important item. For quickest and best results, when butter and sugar are to be creamed together, make the butter smooth and light before any of the sugar is added, then gradually beat the sugar into the butter. Butter is beaten to a cream, when it is of a smooth, cream-like consistency, and the edges look whitish. Creamed butter is preferable for spreading over steak and chops. MAITRE D' HOTEL BUTTER (For Broiled Meats and Fish) Beat two tablespoonfuls of butter to a cream; beat in one-fourth a teaspoonful of salt, a dash of pepper and half a teaspoonful of fine-chopped parsley; then add a teaspoonful of lemon juice, a few drops at a time. For red pepper butter, add in the place of the parsley one or two chilli peppers, chopped fine. A few drops of onion juice may be added.
USE OF OLIVE OIL Our largest use for olive oil is in the form of salad dressings. Occasionally butter or cream is taken for this purpose. Cream is well adapted for use in salad dressings, but as butter is too solid to coat cold vegetables, it is usually made into a dressing by cooking; this detracts from its digestibility, and thus it is preferable not to consider it in this connection. The dressings that a family of two will oftenest elect are called French and mayonnaise dressings. French dressing is preferable with fruit and green vegetables, and, also, to season fish and meats that are afterwards to be served with mayonnaise dressing. A mayonnaise dressing is rich, and thus is used principally at luncheons or banquets, while the lighter French dressing is selected for the more hearty meal of dinner.
This section mixes sound technique on butter with one procedure that has no place in a modern kitchen: the lime-and-sugar "viscogen" used to fake heavy cream. The rest of the page is usable once the old dairy vocabulary is translated.
- Viscogen is quicklime — do not make itQuicklime is calcium oxide, a caustic material that heats violently on contact with water and burns skin, eyes and the mouth. Slaked and dissolved in sugar syrup it yields a strongly alkaline calcium sucrate that was once stirred into cream to thicken it. Lime in various forms is still permitted in some food uses, but viscogen is not something to prepare at home: the method gives no control over concentration or over residual unslaked particles. Skip the whole passage and use a current recipe.
- What to buy insteadThe problem viscogen solved — pasteurized cream too thin to whip — no longer exists. Modern heavy or whipping cream runs 36 percent fat or more and whips without help; 30 percent "light whipping cream" whips softly.
- Single and double creamThe distinction here is about how long milk stood so cream could rise, not about grading. "Thin" or single cream is roughly today's light cream, about 18-20 percent fat; "double, heavy or thick" is 36 percent and up. Centrifugal separation and homogenization ended the twelve-hour and twenty-four-hour rise entirely.
- Whip churn and Dover beaterThe whip churn is a plunger-and-dasher cylinder for aerating thin cream and skimming the froth; the Dover is a hand-crank rotary beater. A stand mixer or hand mixer replaces both. The paper collar over the bowl is still a good trick if you are beating in an open bowl.
- Clarified butterHeating until the froth subsides, the milk solids drop and the water boils off is clarified butter, and the instruction to pour the fat off the sediment is correct. "Keeps almost indefinitely" is optimistic: refrigerate it and use within a few months, since any solids left behind will eventually go rancid.
- Maître d'hôtel butter, yieldTwo tablespoons of butter with salt, pepper, parsley and a teaspoon of lemon is enough to finish two or three portions of steak or fish. Add the lemon a few drops at a time as written, or the butter is liable to break and weep.
- "Chilli peppers" for the red pepper butterIn period American usage "chilli pepper" generally meant a small hot pod, dried or fresh, rather than anything like a jalapeño. One or two dried chiles de árbol, finely chopped, is a reasonable stand-in.
- Butter for creamingThe advice to smooth and lighten the butter before any sugar goes in still holds. Butter at 65-68F takes air; colder butter stays in lumps and warmer butter goes greasy and will not hold the aeration.
This comes from a section of a two-person cookery book of the early 1900s organized around the era's nutritional categories — "fuel foods," protein, fats — which is why a chapter that begins with digestibility theory ends with a butter recipe and a note on dressings. Viscogen belongs to a specific and short-lived moment: commercial pasteurization and centrifugal separation had begun delivering cream that behaved differently from the hand-skimmed article, and calcium sucrate solutions were promoted to restore its whipping body. It appeared in respectable household manuals for a time before better cream put an end to it. Maître d'hôtel butter, by contrast, is straight out of French professional practice and has not changed: a compound butter whose name is generally traced to the hotel steward, still the standard finish for a broiled chop.