Crème anglaise

The sauce every dessert leans on, and the one that turns to sweet scrambled egg at 85 °C. Learn it once and half the pastry book opens.

400 ml — whole milk

100 ml — double cream

1 pc — vanilla pod

6 pc — egg yolk

90 g — sugar

6 yolks : 500 ml milk : 90 g sugar

Bring the milk, cream and split vanilla to the boil, then take it off and leave it twenty minutes. Infusing off the heat gets more flavour out of the pod than boiling it does.

Whisk the yolks and sugar until pale, pour a third of the hot milk over them while whisking, then return everything to the pan.

Stir constantly over a low heat with a wooden spoon, in a figure of eight so nothing sits still in a corner. Stop at 82 °C — when a finger drawn across the back of the spoon leaves a line that holds.

Strain immediately into a cold bowl. Left in the hot pan, it keeps cooking and grains in the minute it takes you to find a jug.