Crème brûlée

Crème brûlée or crème brulée, also known as burnt cream or Trinity cream, and virtually identical to the original crema catalana, is a dessert consisting of a rich custard base topped with a layer of hardened caramelized sugar. It is normally served slightly chilled; the heat from the caramelizing process tends to warm the top of the custard, while leaving the center cool.
The custard base is traditionally flavored with vanilla in French cuisine, but can have other flavorings. It is sometimes garnished with fruit.
History
The earliest known recipe of a dessert called crème brûlée appears in François Massialot's 1691 cookbook . The question of its origin has inspired debate within the modern gastronomical community.
The recipe is then based on egg yolks and milk, with a pinch of flour. Once cooked, François Massialot specifies "that it must be sweetened on top, in addition to the sugar that is put in it: we take the shovel from the fire, very red at the same time we burn the cream, so that it takes a beautiful color of gold".
Some authors mention Bartolomeo Stefani's Latte alla Spagnuola (1662) as describing crema catalana, but it calls for browning the top of the custard before serving with sugar on top.
It seems, however, that Massialot took up and perfected two recipes described by François Pierre de La Varenne 40 years earlier in Le cuisinier françois, published in 1651. Both creams, respectively called Oeufs au lait (eggs with milk) and Oeufs à la crème (eggs in cream) were made by cooking a mixture of beaten eggs, milk or cream, a little butter (in the recipe with milk), salt and sugar. Once curdled, they were "colored with the palette of the fire", and sugar was sprinkled at the time of serving.
Burning the surface of a plate with a red-hot iron to give it colour appears in other recipes in the same book, such as oeufs au miroir de crème (eggs in cream mirror), ramequin de fromage (cheese toast ) and ramequin d'oignon (onion toast) so this custom was not limited to creams.
The name "burnt cream" was later used to refer to the dish in the 1702 English translation of Massialot's . In 1740, he referred to a similar recipe as crême à l'Angloise, or 'English cream', which further cast doubt on its origins. The dessert was introduced at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1879 as "Trinity Cream" or "Cambridge burnt cream", with the college arms "impressed on top of the cream with a branding iron". No dessert by the name crème brûlée appeared again in French cookbooks until the 1980s.
Crème brûlée was generally uncommon in both French and English cookbooks of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It became extremely popular in the 1980s, "a symbol of that decade's self-indulgence and the darling of the restaurant boom", probably popularised by Sirio Maccioni at his New York restaurant Le Cirque. He claimed to have made it "the most famous and by far the most popular dessert in restaurants from Paris to Peoria".
Technique
Crème brûlée is usually served in individual ramekins. Discs of caramel may be prepared separately and put on top just before serving, or the caramel may be formed directly on top of the custard immediately before serving. To do this, sugar is sprinkled onto the custard, then caramelized under a red-hot salamander (a cast-iron disk with a long wooden handle) or with a butane torch.
There are two methods for making the custard. The more common creates a "hot" custard by whisking egg yolks in a double boiler with sugar and incorporating the cream, adding vanilla once the custard is removed from the heat. Alternatively, the egg yolk/sugar mixture can be tempered with hot cream, then adding vanilla at the end. In the "cold" method, the egg yolks and sugar are whisked together until the mixture reaches the ribbon stage. Then, cold heavy cream is whisked into the yolk mixture, followed by the vanilla. It is then poured into ramekins and baked in a bain-marie.
See also
Crème caramel, also known as flan (not to be confused with the English flan)
List of custard desserts
List of French desserts
Citations
General and cited references
External links
Custard desserts
French desserts
British desserts
Spanish desserts