Ode to crème fraîche

We had arrived at the cheese course of a traditional French dinner at the home of friends in Haute Provence.  It was a chilly early autumn evening, and the menu of pumpkin soup followed by a prodigious pot au feu  (French boiled dinner) was perfect for the season.  Now, our hostess unveiled the pièce de résistance--an entire sheep's milk tomme (firm, hard-rind cheese) made by a local producer she and her companion had unearthed at an ephemeral local market.  Now, Haute Provence is goat cheese country.  And this sort of cheese usually comes from the southwest of France, where sheep are raised for milk.  Here in Haute Provence, the innumerable sheep are raised for lamb, and hardly anyone milks them.  If you know France, you're acquainted with the force that such traditions exert.  Many a French person, presented with a superb sheep's milk cheese rivaling any Basque country Ossau Iraty, but produced in southeast rather than southwest France, would raise their eyebrows and say something like, "Mais ça ne se fait pas!"  ("That just isn't done!")

This is a roundabout way of describing how the conversation had now turned to dairy products, or laitages, as they're more intimately called in French.  Denis had launched into an account of how I'd won an apple tart contest in Normandie several years ago, while I demurred, pointing out that my victory was due merely to the exceptional quality of ingredients I happened to have had on hand:  a bunch of 'Orange de Sonnaville' apples, which are extraordinarrily perfumed, and the fabulous crème fraîche of a particular septuagenarian cream vendor at the Saturday morning market at Fécamp, a seaside town in Upper Normandy.  This crème fraîche, I raved, had a flavor like none other:  sweet-tart with a clear note of hazelnuts.  Denis joined my rant.  Plus, I added, she just dips this nectar out of a white plastic bucket, as nonchalant as can be.  It's always seemed to me that a cream of such quality deserves to be stored in--I don't know--fine bone china. 

Our hostess, who hails from the same region of Normandie (the Pays de Caux) where our Norman house is, came to life at this description.  Assuming her best Cauchois accent, she said, "That's right!  That's where the best cream comes from, and it's always ladled out of a white plastic bucket!"

An elderly gentleman, an astronomer and Polytechnicien (graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique, France's elite engineering school) who had as yet not contributed to the cream conversation, now bestirred himself.  Raising his knife in the air and waving it peremptorily, he put me in mind of a big crab which had once emerged from nowhere to block my path near a beach.  The crab waved his pincers so angrily he almost tipped over from sheer fury.  "All crèmes fraîches are alike!" declaimed our gentleman. " How can you hold that one is any different or better from any other?  They're all the same!!"  And he laid down his knife, as if he had thus put an end to the discussion.

Now, let me just tactfully state that throughout the course of the evening, every time this gentleman had contributed to the conversation, he had done so in the most dogmatic and single-minded way imaginable.  At no point had it been possible to engage him into imagining any point of view other than his own.  And although I've described him as elderly, the rigidity of his atittudes--I believe--was not due to any mental infirmity, but simply to the fact that he was a product of the polytechnique system of education.  He was, in fact, the perfect exemplar of a Polytechnicien of his generation.

A shocked silence imposed itself around the table as we all tried to absorb his unthinkable remark.  All creams are alike?  You might as well claim that all French cheeses or wines are alike!  In a country where every single thing you eat is imbued with the inimitable flavor of  its terroir (particularities of its region of origin), well, to say such a thing in good company, ça ne se fait pas!"

While I had politely swallowed this gentleman's various dogmatic attacks, including his incessantly correcting my French, with contained good humor, I was the first to react to his remark on crème fraîche.  My reaction was visceral, and I released it without reflecting on whether I was being well-behaved at the dinner table.  Rearing back in my chair like a startled cobra, I crossed the index fingers of my two hands in the sign one makes for repelling vampires.  A split second later, everyone around the table was doing the same.  And we spoke no more about crème fraîche that evening. 

But then, hilariously, there was this, and I swear I'm not making it up.  As our dinner conversation started to fade, and we were all stifling yawns, our polytechnicien looked at me slyly out of the corner of his eye.  "I would rather like to taste that apple tart of yours sometime," he announced.  I was dumbounded.  He wanted to taste my apple tart--me, the upstart American who'd made the vampire sign at him?  "But," I spluttered, "I can only get that cream in Normandie..."  "I have an apartment in Paris," he retorted.  "Surely you can transport it there!"  I guess in a backdoor kind of way, this meant I'd won the cream wars.

Well, you may now be wondering, just what's so special about this crème fraîche anyway?  Maybe the old guy was right, you're thinking.  Maybe he was the only sensible person sitting at a table ringed with food snobs!

Dear reader, that's exactly why I've told you this story:  to describe to you what an incredible ingredient is crème fraîche, both as a condiment and as a cooking ingredient.  And why, in fact, all crèmes fraîches are not even remotely alike. 

First, you must understand what crème fraîche actually is.  It is simply raw (unpasteurized) cream.  Period.  It is not "cultured," there is nothing added.  Raw whole milk is allowed to stand overnight, and the thick cream is skimmed off the top.  Or it is separated in a centrifuge.  Same difference.  Crème fraîche is a dynamic, living substance.  If you buy it very fresh, directly from a producer like our old lady in Fécamp, the cream is thick but liquid--similar to whipping cream in the U.S., if a bit thicker.  Then, as the days pass and it is kept in the refrigerator, it gets thicker and thicker--and more flavorful.  This is due to the proliferation of the natural, beneficial bacteria that were present as the cow was milked.  The longer you keep the cream, the more acidic it becomes and the more pronounced its flavor.  At a certain moment, often close to three weeks from the time of milking, its flavor tips over to being unpleasantly acidic.  At which point you throw it out, if you've committed the crime of letting it linger in your refrigerator that long.

Now, as any microbiologist will tell you, different bacteria produce different metabolic end products (many of which are acids) and consequently, different flavors and aromas.  If scrupulous cleanliness was not observed at milking time, less desirable bacteria will flavor the cream.  Cream is also exquisitely sensitive to environmental odors, instantly absorbing them, so if the cow wasn't milked in a clean stanchion, the cream will tell the story.  Finally, what the cow eats dramatically influences the flavor (and color) of the cream.  And this, if I could have gotten my Polytechnicien friend to listen, is why not all crème fraîche is alike.

I'm not sure what is sold in the U.S. under the name "crème fraîche."  The only thing I saw at a big organic food chain was cultured and did not have the correct texture.  Please look at the photo at the top of this story.  See how the cream is viscous and forms almost a solid band between the pot and spoon?  This is how crème fraîche should look.  It should NOT look like "sour cream" and it never forms whey in a hollow where you have scooped some out. 

Crème fraîche is an indispensable condiment for dishes both sweet and savory.  Try a spoonful on your apple tart, for instance.  (My son still cherishes the memory of one of his first dinners in Paris, where the waitress served his apple tart with the words, "Et voici votre tarte Tatin et sa crème fraîche," as she placed a miniature milk can of the magical substance next to his plate, to be ladled on at will.)  I would point out that this elocution ("Here is your tarte Tatin with its crème fraîche) denotes in French that this a gustatory match made in heaven.  The two belong together. 

Rare--or maybe nonexistent--is the soup that is not enhanced by a swirl of crème fraîche as a serving time flourish.  And, crème fraîche added to a sauce in its final moments both thickens and richens it without the overwhelming punch of butter.  The best wayt to describe what crème fraîche does to a sauce is to say it smooths it.  Your friends will say, "This sauce is so delicious!  What's in it?"  The magic is that you can boil the sauce with the cream in it because it never curdles!  These are the reasons that much of the cuisine of France--particularly that of Burgundy and Normandie--is awash in crème fraîche!  And as my favorite salesperson at my local cheeseshop says, "No, no!  Crème fraîche doesn't make one gain weight!  It's butter that does that!"

Of course, the best way to find this magic ingredient is to buy raw cream from a reputable local dairy farmer.  Because for all the seeming mystery surrounding it, and despite its fancy-sounding French name, crème fraîche is just what it says:  fresh cream!

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