Perfecting Creme Patissiere

I love custard. Creme Anglaise, Creme Patissiere, even Bird’s Instant. I love it all. In fact, I love the entire spectrum of creamy, eggy fillings, all the way through to mousses, mousseline creams, chiboust and so on. When you like something this much, you become rather picky about it, and in particular about your own ability to make it well. And so began my mission to perfect Creme Patissiere (Pastry Cream).

I began with research, because I’m an academic by profession and that’s what I do. And because I’m also pretty obsessive, I made (as I always do), a spreadsheet. I decided to compare recipes by all the bakers I thought likely to make a good CP, and a range of methods. I’ve made all these recipes multiple times, using different methods and ingredients. Then last Friday, I made a batch of each using the best method and made anyone who came to my house taste them all. I also took some to my friends’ house. There was a clear winner. It will revealed at the end. What follows is the results of my research. First, we’ll look at the recipes, including choice of ingredients, then the method.

Recipes and ingredients

To ensure proper comparison, I scaled all the recipes to 500ml of milk and found the following ratios (the recipes for each are here: Paul Hollywood; Richard Bertinet; Little French Bakery; Raymond Blanc).

	Cornflour	Flour	Egg yolks	Milk	Caster sugar	Butter	Vanilla
Paul Hollywood	40g		4	500ml	100g	40g	2 pods
Richard Bertinet		50g	6	500ml	120g		1 pod
Raymond Blanc	21g	21g	6	500ml	93g		1 pod
Little French Bakery	30g	30g	4	500ml	125g		1 pod

Clearly there are some choices to be made here. Let’s talk ingredients first.

Ingredients

Like most things in cooking, the quality of your ingredients affects the final product. The better the ingredients, the better the output. For CP, you have make choices about milk, butter, eggs, flour, cornflour and vanilla.

Milk: use the best, creamiest one you can find. Don’t use semi-skimmed. CP is meant to be thick, creamy and delightful. Semi-skimmed milk will make it sad and thin. I use Jersey and Guernsey Gold Top milk because it’s creamy and full of flavour. If you can’t get that, use the best milk you can find, preferably from cows who live in good conditions.

Butter: I live in England so it’s easy to get European butter. It has a lower water content and lovely, rich flavour. For CP, I’d use Lescure or President. Failing that, a good English unsalted butter like Duchy or Berkeley Farm (from Abel and Cole). If you want to learn more about butter, Joe Pastry is again the fount of all wisdom.

Flour: If you’re using flour, use a fine flour like sauce flour.

Eggs: Use the best, and for me the best are Burford Browns. Gorgeous golden orange yolks, lots of flavour.

Vanilla: Vanilla beans are the best. If you can’t get beans or they are too expensive, the next best thing is vanilla past. I like Taylor & Colledge best, but Nielsen Massey also do a good one. If you can’t get paste, use a good extract from one of these companies.

Choice of ingredients

There are two big choices: the butter choice and the cornflour / flour choice. And they’re related.

Cornflour or flour or both? I initially thought flour was best, then the mix and now I think cornflour is best. There’s less floury taste with it and the CP seems to hold together better when you use it later.

Butter or not? Put the butter in. It gives the CP a nicer mouthfeel, rounder, smoother, especially if you’re using cornflour – it combats the bounciness and makes it tender instead.

Recipe

Given what I’ve said, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I think Paul Hollywood’s is the best. The others are all fine, but on balance I prefer his (after much testing).

Method

CP can be gorgeous, and it can be sludgy, grainy, tasteless, claggy, runny and gluey. What follows is my method distilled from numerous sources. For some background reading of some ideas that I won’t rehearse here, see the classic method, and two alternative methods here at The Quenelle (the ingredients are here.  And here is an updated version of the method that’s easier to do with only one person); and here at Little French Bakery (which is worth visiting just for the story of her journey to CP perfection).

This is my method, which explanations of why you need to do things this way because understanding the reasons behind the method will help you see what’s important and what isn’t so you can make your own informed changes to what works best for you.

1. Measure all ingredients into separate bowls. Butter should be at room temperature.

2. Put the milk on to simmer with the vanilla pod (split) in it. Once simmering, turn the heat off and put the lid on and leave it to infuse for 15 minutes. Remove the pod, scrape out the seeds with a knife and return to the milk. If using extract or paste, skip this step.

3. Turn the heat up on the milk and watch carefully. You want it to come to a gentle boil.

4. Whisk the egg yolks then gradually whisk in the sugar. Do this slowly to ensure the sugar is fully dissolved. Don’t dump in all the sugar and then whisk [reason: some of the yolk may coagulate and make your CP less than velvety smooth].

5. Once egg yolks and sugar are fully whisked, fluffy and pale, whisk in the sift cornflour.

6. The milk should be gently boiling by now. If it isn’t, wait until it is. If it came to the boil too soon, take it off and now bring it back up. You want it at a gentle boil [reason: you don’t want the milk / egg mixture to be too cool when it goes in later as this will drop the temperature of the whole mix and you’ll have to heat the creme for longer. You want to avoid this – the less time the creme is over direct heat, the better]

7. Add 1/3 of the hot milk while whisking. Return the rest of the milk to the pan.

8. While whisking, bring the milk in the pan to a rolling boil. You want it starting to rise up the sides of the pan just before you add in the egg/milk mixture, which you do by dumping it all in and whisking madly [reason: again, you want everything to stay hot so the process of coagulation is not protracted unnecessarily. The longer it takes, the grainier and claggier your CP will be].

9. Whisk until all of the CP has thickened. If you stop stirring for a second, it will burp. It is done. Take it off the heat. EDIT: Following Lester’s comment, I’ve consulted McGee, who says you need to bring egg/starch mixes to a full boil to inactivate the amylase from the yolk, which will otherwise liquefy the CP eventually (because the amylase enzyme breaks down amylose, which is part of the the starch which is giving the CP some of its structure and thickness, ie just as Lester said). So, I revise my methods – do get it to burp (ie boil) and keep it there for a minute (McGee says 1-2 minutes), stirring constantly with a whisk. This is especially important if you want the CP to stay firm for a few days, as the amylase will work on it over time and make it increasingly liquid.

All that said, it is still important to remember what you’re trying to do – bring the yolks to the temperature where they coagulate (80-82C when in liquid) and cornstarch to the point where the starch gelates (62-80C) and inactivate the amylase in the yolks (takes a minute at the boil). Therefore, once everything coagulates and starts to burp, cook it only the minimum length of time. And I guess if you’re serving it very soon, then you won’t care as much about the amylase and could stop cooking when it coagulates. If making a tart where you’re going to cut and want it to keep it’s shape, then cooking for long enough is obviously important.

UPDATE: I’ve made another batch of CP and used my method. It coagulated in about 10 seconds, and burped a few seconds later, and I held it there until 1 minute had passed from the first burp. Texture and flavour were just as good. The whole process from dumping in the eggs to off the heat took about 75 seconds. Much quicker than I used to do it, when I’d stand there stirring for ages while it got up to temperature, so still following Little French Bakery’s advice makes a huge difference, but the holding at temp for 1 minute didn’t harm it.

10. Place clingfilm over it and let it cool down to 60C [reason: clingfilm stops a skin forming; 60C is the temp when butter won’t melt in].

11. Stir in the butter in small pieces. You can whisk at this stage.

12. Cover with clingfilm and chill.

Ingredients all ready

Eggs and sugar whisked together

Flour whisked in to eggs and sugar

Finished creme patissiere just taken off the heat

Final words on using Creme Patissiere

As it cools, it forms a starch network and it will set and be a bit jelly-like. If you want to use it set, you can pour it into a mould when it’s warm, or pour it between layers of puff pastry in a tin to make mille-feuille if that’s how you want it. Usually, however, people want it a bit looser. To achieve this, beat it gently with a spoon to break it up. Don’t whisk it once it’s cold as it breaks up the starch too much and makes it sloppy. Gently beating for as long as it takes is much better.

Eaten

Which Recipe Was the Winner?

Obviously, if you’ve been reading closely, you’ll guess it was Paul Hollywood for recipe. I’ve made his, Quenelle’s, and Raymond Blanc’s using Quenelle’s method, traditional method, and my method. In the blind taster, Raymond came last, Quenelle generally second and Paul Hollywood’s made with my method (which is pretty much The Little French Bakery method) was the standout winner.