Crème Pâtissière

HappyIdiotTalk

Just looking at a recipe for this in Gordon Ramseys 'Just Desserts; p195'. It calls for 1 egg and three egg yolks with 75g of sugar, beaten until pale and creamy. Hot milk and cream is then added, and the lot poured back into a pan and simmered gently for 3-4 minutes?????? :eek:

Huh! I make icecream and this sounds like the recipe and method for making icecream custard and the one thing you dont do is allow the mixture to simmer as this turns the mixture into scambled eggs.

I'm confused, can anyone enlighten me on this?

yumyums

Creme Patissiere should have flour and/or cornflour in which will help stabilise the eggs. This way they don't curdle when you leave it to simmer. The simmering helps cook out the starch from the flours and gives a smoother texture. Creme Patissiere is a lot thicker than normal custard and is often used as a base for other creams like creme mousseline etc.

HappyIdiotTalk

yumyums wrote: »

Creme Patissiere should have flour and/or cornflour in which will help stabilise the eggs. This way they don't curdle when you leave it to simmer. The simmering helps cook out the starch from the flours and gives a smoother texture. Creme Patissiere is a lot thicker than normal custard and is often used as a base for other creams like creme mousseline etc.

Aha! Thank you, it does say 40g of cornflour so I'll take your word for it. :beer:

thriftlady_2

Yep, just checked in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cookery, and she says that 'This custard is also made of egg yolks, sugar and milk, but unlike crème anglaise, it contains flour so it may be brought to the boil and is much thicker.'

morganlefay

I always find Gordon quite hard to follow - he always seem to use more egg yolks, or some technique I'm bad at. I found a Delia recipe for lemon CP which sounds easier and seemed to me to explain better:

http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/main-ingredient/lemon/lemon-millefeuille.html

I imagine you could leave out the lemon ?