Vermont · Dessert
Maple Creemee
- Intermediate
- 4 h
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a sweet edge rounding the corners.
Ingredients
- 500ml heavy cream
- 250ml whole milk
- 200ml dark maple syrup
- 4 egg yolks
- 1/4 tsp salt
Equipment
Ice-cream churner
The skills inside
Tempering a custardChurning ice creamStraining & passing through a sieve
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
- Warm the milk, cream, and syrup together until steaming.
- Whisk the yolks with the salt, temper in the hot dairy, and return to the pan.
- Cook to 82C, stirring, until it coats the back of a spoon.
- Strain and chill thoroughly, ideally overnight.
- Churn in an ice cream machine and serve immediately, soft, in a cone: a creemee is never hard-frozen.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques 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.
Straining & passing through a sieve 148 recipes
- Nothing solid got through: a finger drawn through what came out finds no fibre, seed, skin, curd, or grit.
- Where the dish wants body it was worked through rather than left to drip, and the solids left in the mesh are spent and dry rather than still holding liquid worth having.
- It is judged on the tongue rather than by eye: smooth, with no residual grain left behind after the mouthful has gone.
- The mesh was fine enough for the job and held its shape, and nothing bypassed it by going over the rim.
- The yield is close to what went in less the spent solids: not half of it abandoned in the sieve because it stopped running and nobody pushed.
Where it goes wrong It was pushed through a mesh too coarse for it, or the sieve was overloaded and slopped at the rim, so the fibres it was meant to remove are in the finished sauce and it reads grainy on the tongue.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Tawny Port
- Also Right
- PX Sherry or bourbon
- From the Taps
- Barleywine
- Zero-Proof
- Cold-brew coffee
Caramel echoing caramel: oxidative aging built the same flavors into the glass that the pan built into the plate.
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