No. 41

English Cream with Coffee

Creme Anglaise au Cafe

Boil a quart of milk, add to it four ounces of freshly roasted coffee beans, cover the saucepan and leave to infuse for half an hour. Beat eight egg-yolks with half a pound of sugar, dilute with the boiling coffee milk strained through a fine colander; stand the saucepan on a slow fire, stir the cream until it becomes quite thick, without allowing it to boil, then take it off, strain through a sieve and pour it into a vessel, stir frequently till cold.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is crème anglaise — a stirred egg-yolk custard — flavored by steeping whole coffee beans in hot milk. The method is sound; only the units and the fire need translating.

The measurementsA quart of milk is 4 cups; half a pound of sugar is about 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons of granulated. Four ounces of coffee beans is roughly 1⅓ cups of whole beans, weighed rather than scooped.
Whole beans, not groundThe recipe specifies beans, not grounds, and nothing in it calls for grinding. Whole beans give a clean, sweet infusion; ground coffee steeped 30 minutes in hot milk turns bitter and astringent and clouds the custard. If you use ground coffee, cut the steep to 10 minutes.
"Freshly roasted"Home roasting was still practised in this period, though packaged roasted coffee was also widely sold by the 1890s. Use beans within a week or two of their roast date; stale beans give a flat, papery infusion that sugar will not rescue. A medium roast reads most clearly through dairy.
"A slow fire" means low and patientCook the custard over low heat, or in a bowl set over barely simmering water if you are cautious. It thickens between 175 and 180F and scrambles a few degrees above that. A thermometer replaces the 19th-century cook's judgment here.
The hinge: it must not boilEverything else is forgiving; this is not. At a boil the yolk proteins seize and the cream goes grainy. Pull it the moment it coats the back of a spoon and leaves a clear track when you draw a finger through.
Temper as you dilute"Dilute with the boiling coffee milk" means pour it into the yolks slowly and in a thin stream, whisking constantly. Adding it all at once cooks the yolks in the bowl.
Strain and stir coldThe second straining catches any set threads of yolk. Stirring as it cools prevents a skin and speeds the drop out of the temperature range where bacteria multiply; a bowl set in ice water helps.
Yield and useAbout 5 cups — enough sauce for 8 to 10. Serve it poured over poached fruit or cake, or freeze it as the base for coffee ice cream.

A Little History

"English cream" is a straight translation of crème anglaise, the French kitchen's name for a stirred custard sauce thickened with yolks alone; the usual explanation for the name is the association of pouring custards with English tables, though this is traditional rather than documented. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, placed it among the Elementary Methods of The Epicurean (1894) as a foundation rather than a dish: the same base, differently flavored, becomes the vanilla, lemon and orange creams of the entry that follows. The coffee version dates from a period when "freshly roasted" was a meaningful instruction, and steeping whole beans in scalded milk was one common way to get coffee flavor into dairy.