Flowery food descriptions: 'hand baked'

[Fnaar]

Creme brulee originates from France, and is commonly understood. Translating it is unnecessary inverted snobbery.

If you see "pork" on the menu, do you translate it to "pig"? I'd hate to think that you were being inconsistent.

That's right. And I never ask a lady for a "French kiss" when "slobbery tongues" describes it well enough...

 

[User482]

No, gravy is a word understood by you to be a thickened sauce made from meat juices. Proper gravy is made from residues left in the pan from roasting, deglazed with a good stock and seasoned carefully. Some cooks add flour to thicken it, but this practice is frowned upon by purists.

"Jus" is just a French word meaning roughly the same as the classic definition of gravy. It's not needed in English.

Burnt cream is a very old dish. It's not a translation. I don't really care if people use "Crème brûlée" if they are able to spell it, but most menus I've seen it on in the UK, it isn't.

Gravy is considered to be thickened by me and virtually everyone else. Burnt cream is neither cream nor burnt. But if you wish to stick with entirely inaccurate descriptions, that's up to you.

 

[growingvegetables]

Proper gravy is made from residues left in the pan from roasting, deglazed with a good stock and seasoned carefully.

There is one honourable exception - properly made, slow-slow-slow cooked onion gravy.

 

[Hover Fly]

I figured that, or something like it, was going to be the case. Us commoner Brits (and I do include myself) have bastardised the original.

Speaking of which, isn't there a 'pudding club' or somesuch in London that now only uses Birds custard powder because that's what the clientèle consider to be 'proper' custard.?

Just remembered another difference; I think creme anglais is always cold. Certainly, I've never had it warm. But it must be said, the French don't really do puddings. Desserts yes, but not heavy stodgy steamed puddings with hot, thick custard. They really don't know what they're missing or maybe they do

Our cook asked me for advice about making custard once. I hadn't the heart to tell her that perhaps 1 in 100 British housewives would know how to make custard from scratch, a quarter of the remainder would be bothered to make powder up (all that measuring milk palaver...) and the rest would just open a tin.
This was the cook who, needing to make some desserts at short notice, melted some Mars bars, stirred the resulting mess up and poured it over some pear halves.

 

[Rezillo]

Gravy is understood by most people to be a thickened sauce made from meat juices. Therefore, having another word to describe an unthickened sauce is entirely appropriate.

Delia is wrong? (faints)

Para 2 How to make gravy

John

 

[User482]

Delia is wrong? (faints)

Para 2 How to make gravy

John

It's about what is commonly understood by the term, rather than a strict definition. You'll note that her recipe used flour for thickening...

 

[Rapples]

It's about what is commonly understood by the term, rather than a strict definition. You'll note that her recipe used flour for thickening...

When did you change your mind, I note your recipe doesn't

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2001/dec/09/foodanddrink.recipes2

At least 4 kilos fresh beef bones, including at least one marrow bone
1 kilo fresh shin of beef, in one or two large pieces
Stock vegetables, ie 4 large carrots, 4 leeks, 4 onions, half a head of celery
2 bay leaves
Sprig of thyme, if handy
A few peppercorns

To finish:

Bottle red wine
Salt, pepper

In a hot oven (210°C) roast all the bones for 15-20 minutes until sizzling and nicely browned. Place the browned bones and the fresh piece of shin in your largest stock pot and cover by at least half an inch with cold water. Bring to boiling point, but never allow more than the most tremulous simmer. Patches of dirty grey-brown bubbles (scum!) will appear on the surface. Skim these off with a spoon. When the only scum appearing is a clean white colour, you can stop skimming.

Now add the vegetables, washed and cut up into chunky pieces, and the herbs. Bring back to your slow, tremulous simmer, and cook for 4-5 hours minimum, ideally 6 or 7. (Remove the shin after 3 hours if you want to eat it - delicious cold and dressed with a mustardy vinaigrette).

Strain the stock into a clean pan or large basin. Discard the vegetables and bones (feed both to the dog if you like). Leave the stock in a fridge or cool place, ideally overnight, so the stock turns to jelly and the fat sets hard on the top. Carefully remove all the fat and discard.

Warm up the stock over a gentle heat, so it liquifies completely, then strain it carefully through muslin or a cotton cloth. Transfer to a clean heavy-based pan of at least 4 litres capacity, add the wine, and boil hard to reduce. As it becomes darker and more concentrated, taste regularly. It will taste like it needs salt but don't be tempted to add it yet as it will get much too salty as it reduces. Stop when you have a rich, concentrated beefy sauce that is lightly syrupy but not too sticky. Only at this point should you season, to taste, with salt.

You can keep this sauce, chilled as a jelly, in the fridge for up to a week. To serve it with the beef, gently warm it until not quite boiling, and 'refresh' with a few drops of new wine, before serving.

You can also add the deglazed pan juices from the roasting tray, but make sure they are not too salty, and not too fatty, or they will spoil all your hard work.

 

[Rezillo]

What I would commonly understand by the term 'jus' on a menu, rather than 'gravy', is the greater likelihood at such an establishment of me getting a thimbleful of something runny smeared artistically round a plate that is several times bigger than the disappointingly small portion of food sitting on it.

John

 

[Fnaar]

Delia is wrong? (faints)

Para 2 How to make gravy

John

If Delia's juices were flowing, I'd be tempted to offer some thickener...

 

[Haitch]

According to Delia:

Crème brûlée has its origins in England – it was invented at Trinity College, Cambridge, where it was known as Burnt Cream.

 

[User482]

Nonsense. Jus remains a pretentious and unneccessary word. On gravy, I was quoting literally from a well-known, internationally cited expert on British food and it is certainly not thickened by virtually everyone else. If you wish to stick to entirely inaccurate descriptions,. that's up to you. Classic gravy doesn't get thickened, it's the same as a jus. It doesn't need a French word unless you're in a francophone country.

And burnt cream has existed for hundreds of years and is a perfectly acceptable way of describing the dish in English. It's also easier to spell than the French equivalent.

Using a French word for gravy is not only poncy, it's just de trop.

And equally, I could quote plenty of sources that describe gravy as thickened. Which would reflect how most people think of it.

Burnt cream is so called because it is a literal translation of French. It is not cream and it isn't burnt. If the dish had originated from England it would be called custard, not cream. The description makes as much sense as calling papier mache "eaten paper".

Using an innaccurate English description of a French dish is a pointless affectation.

 

[User482]

According to Delia:

From Wiki:

"The earliest known reference of crème brûlée as we know it today appears in François Massialot's 1691 cookbook,[sup][2][/sup] and the French name was used in the English translation of this book, but the 1731 edition of Massialot's Cuisinier roial et bourgeois changed the name of the same recipe from "crème brûlée" to "crème anglaise".[sup][3][/sup] In the early eighteenth century, the dessert was called "burnt cream" in English."[sup]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crème_brûlée#cite_note-3[/sup]

In Britain, a version of crème brûlée (known locally as 'Trinity Cream' or 'Cambridge burnt cream') was introduced at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1879

 

[User482]

Who could you quote out of interest?

And why do you keep saying it's not cream and it isn't burnt? If that's so wrong then surely you should reject the French version, which means "burnt cream". Why is the French version any better than the English, which has been called burnt cream for hundreds of years? Especially if hardly anyone in the UK can spell it properly.

Using the French word "jus" in a situation where a perfectly good English word existed for hundreds of years is a pointless affectation. Chefs managed to serve gravy before the nineties in the UK.

Papier-mâché is chewed paper by the way, not eaten paper.

So you'd call it chewed paper? If not, why not? The French isn't any better...

The earliest known reference to the dessert is in a French cookbook. The direct translation is cream because there is no French word for custard. The French version is better because creme can mean custard. In English, custard and cream are not the same thing, so describing it as such is plain wrong.

Being able to differentiate between thickened and unthickened gravy with two different short words is perfectly sensible.

And I ask again, why order beef when you can ask for cow? It's a perfectly good English word...

 

[Fnaar]

The French word for "mustard" is "moutarde". Therefore, it follows that the French word for "custard", should be "coutarde". I shall write to Prez Sarkozy and see what he reckons.

 

[User482]

The French word for "mustard" is "moutarde". Therefore, it follows that the French word for "custard", should be "coutarde". I shall write to Prez Sarkozy and see what he reckons.

I reckon the Academie Francaise will love it...