Recipes with cream

Cream does not just bring fat: it brings fat that holds. That is what separates it from milk, which splits the moment you push it, and from yoghurt, which breaks in heat. Full-fat cream survives boiling, thickens as it reduces, and whips to a foam as long as it is cold. Three uses, one product — and most northern kitchens built something around it.

In one camp it is a sauce or a topping added at the last second: Romanian mămăligă and Ukrainian banosh take their spoonful of soured cream on hot polenta, draniki and placki ziemniaczane wait for it beside the potato pancakes, and Hungarian lángos is spread with it. In the other it is cooked into the dish and becomes its texture: vichyssoise, pastéis de nata with a custard baked in a fierce oven, South African malva pudding soaked in hot cream straight from the oven.

Two practical points. For whipping, everything must be cold — cream, bowl, whisk — and the cream must be full-fat: below roughly 30% fat it will not hold air, whatever you do. For cooking, beware of reduced-fat creams and of acid: lemon juice or tomato stirred into boiling cream will curdle it. Add the acid off the heat, at the end, as in rødgrød med fløde, where the cream is simply poured cold over the fruit.