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Sweet Cream Sauce
Place one and a half gills milk and one gill cream in a small saucepan and let come to a boil. Place in a vessel two egg yolks, three-quarters ounce flour, one and a half ounces sugar and half teaspoon vanilla essence, sharply stir with a wooden spoon for two minutes, gradually pour in the milk, sharply mixing while adding it, transfer the preparation to the saucepan, set on the fire and continually stir until it comes to a boil. Remove, strain and use as required.
A flour-thickened sweet custard sauce — closer to a thin pastry cream than to a true crème anglaise. The flour is what makes it forgiving.
- Gills to cupsA gill is half a cup, so this is 3/4 cup milk and 1/2 cup cream. The finished yield is a little over a cup of sauce, enough for four to six portions poured over pudding, cake or poached fruit.
- Ounces are weightsThree-quarters ounce flour is about 3 tablespoons; one and a half ounces sugar is about 3 tablespoons. Weigh them if you can — volume measures of flour vary enough here to change the body of the sauce noticeably.
- The hinge: it must actually boilUnlike an egg-only custard, this one contains starch and has to reach a full boil for the flour to thicken properly and lose its raw taste. The flour also protects the yolks, so the sauce will not curdle at boiling point the way plain crème anglaise would.
- Beat the yolks and flour firstThe two minutes of sharp stirring before any liquid goes in is not filler — it disperses the flour into the yolks so no dry lumps survive. Add the hot milk in a thin stream at first, whisking, then faster.
- Stir the base, not just the surfaceStarch sets on the bottom of the pan before it thickens the body of the sauce. Use a flat-bottomed wooden spoon or a whisk and keep it moving over the whole floor of the pan, on medium heat rather than high.
- Vanilla essenceHalf a teaspoon of extract is right. If using a vanilla pod instead, split it into the milk and cream, infuse off the heat, and strain it out at the end — the recipe's final straining step handles it.
- Serving and holdingServe warm, or press plastic wrap onto the surface while cooling to stop a skin forming. It thickens considerably in the refrigerator; loosen with a spoonful of milk over low heat, whisking, and it will come back.
A flour-thickened custard sauce written in the clipped shorthand of a professional kitchen: components listed by weight, the method run straight through without explanation. The flour is what distinguishes it from crème anglaise — a starch-stabilised custard is far less prone to curdling, and so easier to hold and to reheat than an egg-only sauce. The same base, made thicker and cooled, is the crème pâtissière that fills éclairs and tarts.