The World Table

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French · Dessert

Crème Brûlée

  • Intermediate
  • 60 min
  • roughly 2 of 4 for cost
  • Vegetarian

rich · floral · charred · silky Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a floral thread lifting the aroma, melting away silken.

Ingredients

  • 500ml cream
  • 1 vanilla bean or 2 tsp paste
  • 6 egg yolks
  • 80g sugar + more for the crust

Equipment

Ramekins · Torch · Bain-marie

The skills inside

Tempering a custardThe brûlée torchThe water bathStraining & passing through a sieve

The words inside

The Kitchen TorchVanilla

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

  1. Warm cream with vanilla. Whisk yolks and sugar; temper in the cream.
  2. Strain into ramekins; bake in a water bath at 150°C, 30–35 min, until just wobbly. 35 min
  3. Chill 4+ hours.
  4. Sprinkle a thin, even layer of sugar; torch to amber glass.

How it should come out

  • The sugar is one unbroken amber sheet edge to edge, right up to the ramekin wall: no black scorched spots, no white grains left unmelted.
  • The back of a spoon breaks it in a single crack and the shards come away large; the sugar layer is under 2mm.
  • Nudged at the end of the bake, the custard moves as one slow mass under a set surface: no loose ripple or liquid slack at the centre, and no ramekin that has stopped moving altogether. Chilled, it is set edge to edge with nothing sloshing.
  • The first spoonful leaves a clean-walled trench that holds its shape, with no watery pool collecting in it and no grain or bubbles in the custard.
  • The custard is still fridge-cold to the spoon while the caramel over it is warm; if both are the same temperature, it was torched too early.

Where it goes wrong It is baked to firm instead of to the wobble: held in until nothing moves at all, so carryover pushes it past the set: the custard puffs, tightens grainy at the edges and weeps a ring of watery whey that pools in the first spoonful.

At the Table

The Pour
Sauternes
Also Right
Demi-sec Champagne
From the Taps
Belgian tripel
Zero-Proof
Jasmine tea

The sweetness rule is absolute: the pour must be sweeter than the plate, and acid keeps it from cloying.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Crème Brûlée Technique: Tempering a custardThe skill inside this recipeTechnique: The brûlée torchThe skill inside this recipe Search YouTube: Jacques Pépin on Crème Brûlée A YouTube search for Jacques Pépin and this dish. No affiliation.