Variations cream ona
Custard can be made thick and thin
Ialmost missed my flight out of Charles de Gaulle once, when luggage scanners found one of my bags full of cartons of a liquid so dense it was almost solid. The tension finally broke with a murmur of approval from the security workers when they opened my bag.
“Le blah blah l’Américain blah blah oui oui blahblahblah le Crème Anglaise.”
Translation: “The American wants to bring home some Crème Anglaise. Can you blame him?”
It translates into “English cream” and is often referred to as “pouring custard.” The thick, velvety creaminess of this yellow sauce permeates the crannies of the baked goods onto which it is so often poured. There was never enough on mine. I wanted to drink it.
In a Paris supermarket one day, I noticed that Crème Anglaise was available in boxes like the ones in which you buy soy milk. I bought a carton and clawed it open on the sidewalk. It was not the same as the freshly made stuff in restaurants. It was thinner and like an extra-smooth version of eggnog, minus the nutmeg. And that was my first inkling of the existence of a gradient among drinking custards.
Freshly made Crème Anglaise occupies the thick extreme of that spectrum. At the absolute other end is store-bought eggnog, which isn’t really a custard as much as a thick liquid.
When you make eggnog at home, you can make it as French as you want it to be. By French, I mean thick, creamy and smooth. For practical purposes, that means more cream, more eggs and more stirring. The finest eggnog recipe I know, my friend Luci’s, is essentially a thin version of Crème Anglaise, along the lines of what they sell in cartons. It’s made via a nearly identical process, but with fewer eggs and lighter cream, and is thin enough to drink without shedding its custardy body.
So here they are, the two recipes that matter. The two ends of the edible eggnog spectrum worth exploring.
Ari LeVaux lives in Montana and New Mexico and can be reached at flash@flashinthepan.net. Follow him on Twitter at @arilevaux.