Spanish · Dessert
Crema Catalana
- Intermediate
- 40 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with warm spice humming through the middle, richness that coats and comforts, with a bitter-edged char at the rim.
Ingredients
- 500ml whole milk
- Lemon peel, orange peel, cinnamon stick
- 6 egg yolks, 100g sugar
- 20g cornstarch
- Sugar for the burnt crust
Equipment
Torch
The skills inside
Tempering a custardThe brûlée torch
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: dairy · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Infuse milk with citrus peel and cinnamon 15 min; strain. 15 min
- Whisk yolks, sugar, cornstarch; temper in milk; return to the stove.
- Stir until it thickens to loose pudding: first bubble, then off.
- Chill in shallow dishes; burn a sugar crust with a torch or screaming-hot spoon.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Tempering a custard 59 recipes
- The hot liquid went into the eggs a little at a time with constant whisking, and only then did everything go back to the pot.
- The heat under it stayed gentle throughout and it was never allowed to boil.
- Stirred continuously and right into the corners of the pan, where it thickens first and sets unnoticed.
- Judged by behaviour: it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon and hold a clean line when a finger is drawn through it.
- Taken off before it looks finished, and strained. Residual heat carries it the rest of the way, and a custard held on the heat until it looks right arrives past right.
Where it goes wrong The hot liquid went in too fast, or the pot went back over full heat to save time. The yolks set into threads before they could thicken smoothly, and a scrambled custard does not come back; straining hides a little of it and nothing hides the rest.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Moscato d’Asti
- Also Right
- Late-harvest Riesling
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling elderflower
Citrus desserts need a wine sweeter than they are, with acid enough to keep up: light, frothy, and low-proof wins.
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