What's that cream?
Different kinds of (whipping)cream in different countries.
Recently my Notes1 feed has been showing me more accounts sharing things about baking and cooking so I have opinions.
I came across an article talking about the differences between baking and product terms in various countries. Mostly I suppose the US vs. Europe.
I couldn’t resist adding a few things of my own. I mentioned the difference between powdered and icing sugar in my book so this is a comparison of different kinds of cream available in the UK vs. Belgium and The Netherlands. Products are similar in France.
An important difference between Belgium and France being ‘crème fraiche’, a Dutch Belgian dialect word referring to whipped cream.
As in, ‘where’s the crème fraiche, the ice cream is melting and get those bowls out so you can take the coupes, ice cream with fruit and whipped cream, to our guests’.
Crème is also a dialect word for ice cream ‘da’s nu is goeie crème’, now that’s good ice cream.
In French crème fraiche, labelled ‘creme fraiche épaisse’ meaning thickened, is a lightly soured thick cream used in savoury dishes. Think in soups, quiches or with smoked salmon. It’s also sold in Belgian supermarkets as ‘zure room’ or sour cream as well as as crème fraiche, bilingual country of course2, but in the Netherlands just as crème fraiche, confusing since they also sell ready-whipped whipping cream.
The article mentioned various fat percentages in creams and what is considered heavy cream etc.
Interestingly, in the UK whipping cream sold in supermarkets is %40 fat which is really the percentage needed for lush whipped cream.
This is also the % in whipping cream for professional use in Belgium but store-bought will be the %35-36 the article mentions.
One or two brands in stores will have %40 fat, look for artisan or organic ones.
Single cream or cooking cream has a lower fat content, won’t whip unless you add additives and is used for soups, mashed potatoes…
British supermarkets sell ‘double cream’ which is super rich and has a %50 fat content. There is of course also ‘clotted cream’ which is a thickened cream you can scoop and put on top of scones, pies… None of the standard UK creams have thickeners or sweeteners added. Belgian or Dutch whipping cream at %35-36 fat usually has a stabilizer added.
if you don’t know what Notes is, I’m writing this article on a platform called Substack. It’s basically an old-school blogging platform like Blogger that also has a built-in social media thing called Notes. It’s an internal system so you need a Substack account to join vs. these articles anyone can read and subscribe to. People seem to use it like they used to use Twitter.
technically tri-lingual because German is an official language too but brands will feature Dutch and French labeling most prominently on packaging.
So glad we have something extra special in the UK double and clotted creams!!
This is a great post. I’m from England and moved to Canada about 11 years ago. Almost right away I found that it was not possible to find double cream 🫢. Also the cream is labelled by percentage here and the highest fat content in standard cream is 35%. It does whip but not to the texture I was used to be able to getting. On the plus side it is nice and light. I eventually found some double cream in a tiny little glass bottle, nowhere near enough for baking!