Clotted cream topped with jam
on freshly baked scones

To most people in Britain, the phrase "clotted cream" instantly summons up an image of teatime. Not just any teatime, either, but a slightly special tea, the famous Cream Tea, maybe experienced in a small country hotel or pub somewhere -- someplace cozy and homey -- with a spread of scones and sweet cakes, and little individual tubs (never big enough!) of rich, lovely clotted cream to spread on them.

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be as clear an understanding of the clotted cream concept elsewhere in the world. Part of the problem may be the name itself, as the word "clotted" no longer sounds terribly appetizing to many English-speakers -- and Heaven only knows how the phrase translates into other languages. Sometimes even the way it looks, right out of the container, may put people off. EuroCuisineLady remembers one teatime on a transatlantic British Airways flight some years ago, when across the aisle an Asian gentleman opened up the little single-serving container of clotted cream that had come with the scone on his snack tray, took one look at the contents -- slightly crusted with golden butterfat on top -- and put it hurriedly aside as some bizarre Western dairy product that had gone terribly wrong.

Well, appearances can be deceiving, as clotted cream is one of the most delicious things imaginable to spread on a scone or other sweet biscuit -- faintly sweet, beautifully thick, rich and buttery, with a slight nutty aroma and flavor that comes from the ever-so-gentle cooking of the cream. Besides just spreading it on baked goods and spooning it over fresh berries or other fruit, clotted cream is great to use in baking and confectionery, if you've got enough of it. Clotted cream fudge is a favorite with the tourists in Cornwall and Devon, and clotted cream also can be used as an ingredient in ice cream as well as a wickedly rich and yummy topping for pies, cakes and other desserts. It even works well in hot drinks: hot chocolate or cocoa with a dollop of clotted cream melting gently in it becomes truly (as chocolate's botanical name Theobroma implies) a drink for the gods.

Fresh clotted cream

Possibly the ambiguity or potential unattractiveness of the phrase "clotted cream" is why some producers prefer to label this luscious stuff as "Devon cream" or "Devonshire cream", as a nod toward Devon and Cornwall, from which the best clotted cream still comes and where the high art of the Cream Tea is celebrated in tiny country tea shops and hostelries everywhere. In that westernmost of English regions, there is a long tradition of making extra money from home dairying by selling clotted cream as what would now be called a "value added product". In earlier times, making clotted cream at home was usually too much trouble for anyone who didn't already have a dairy of their own: city people were entirely delighted to buy it ready made on site (or by mail). It was also a great way for the home dairy owner to deal with all the extra cream that can pile up around the place when you'd already made all the butter you needed.

If you've never had clotted cream, you may first want to try some to see whether it's a delicacy you'd like to make at home. US readers can find it at online sources like The English Tea Store, British Delights and Britshoppe. (See also this Google search for more online sales sources.) UK and European users have a different range of sources: in the UK many supermarket chains and specialty food stores carry clotted cream, and you can also order online from the famous Rodda's of Cornwall. Irish readers, please note that the artisanal dairy Glenilen Farm of West Cork is now making and marketing its own clotted cream in the Republic.

If you're ready to try your hand at making your own clotted / Devonshire cream, it's not at all difficult. Click on "read more" for a complete description of traditional techniques and the easy modern method.

There's a widespread tradition in European baking of holiday cakes that involve a contest or a prize. Normally these cakes have something special baked inside them -- a charm, a bean, whatever -- which marks out the lucky person who gets it as the King or Queen of the day.

In Scotland, the cake used for this has traditionally been Black Bun. The name is somewhat deceptive. It's not a bun, but a densely textured fruitcake inside a pastry case: and the insides aren't so much black as a really dark brown. In any case, Black Bun is always baked well ahead of the holiday so it has time to mature.

The basic Black Bun recipe has remained the same for hundreds of years. Interestingly, though, its original holiday has slipped out from under it and realigned itself. For centuries the Scots (like the Irish and other agrarian European societies) celebrated New Year's Day in the spring -- the idea being that the new year properly began when the first new growth did. But the calendar reforms of the mid-16th century started to change this way of thinking, and in 1599, King James VI of Scotland and his council officially changed the celebration date of New Year's to January 1st. As a result, Black Bun now starts turning up in Scottish stores around the same time the Christmas cakes do, and is present on many Scottish tables for the Hogmanay holiday. (The bean or charm formerly baked inside when Black Bun was made for the celebrations at Twelfth Night / January 6th is now often omitted, especially in commercially baked versions of the cake, for "health and safety" reasons.)

Scottish and UK users are fortunate in that they can find the cake at online sources like this one at ScottishGourmetFood.co.uk. The rest of us just have to make our Black Bun ourselves. Fortunately the recipe's not complicated. And a useful side effect of the baking is that Black Bun keeps for months if kept cool and dry in a tightly sealed cake tin.

Click on "read more" for the Black Bun recipe and method.

The basic Cornish pasty (or "pastie", an incorrect spelling that persists) is one of those traditional dishes that suffers, like many others, from being spuriously re-invented every generation or so by people who don't understand that it's just fine the way it is. Especially in pubs in London -- but also in fast food joints and supermarkets all over the United Kingdom -- you can and will find objects touted as "traditional Cornish pasties" which nonetheless contain ingredients that no self-respecting Cornishman or Cornishwoman would ever allow near them.

By "traditional" we mean the oldest and most basic form of the pasty, which contained meat (usually a cheap cut of steak), potatoes, turnip or swede/rutabaga, and onion, and nothing but salt and pepper to season it. It was a simple thing -- maybe almost too simple for modern tastes, as people see the recipe and start immediately getting the urge to tamper with it. (On seeing this kind of behavior, EuroCuisineGuy can usually be heard muttering in the background, "Let's not get all Heston Blumenthal on its butt. Just let the poor thing be a pasty.")

Historically, the basic Cornish pasty was a working man's dish -- the kind of thing you take down a tin mine with you, or out to the fields. The pastry keeps the contents contained and (for a while) hot: the ridged outer edge of the pastry lets you eat even if your hands are black with coal-dust -- you just get rid of the "handle" after you eat everything else. It was perfectly designed as a fast food of its time: an individual serving, handily packaged, and with no wrapping or waste to bring home or get rid of afterwards.

When the wives and sisters and mothers who made these pasties for their men felt like it -- and had the necessary ingredients on hand -- they did venture beyond the traditional meat/potato/turnip recipe, and got innovative with the pasty's structure as well. Larger-sized pasties were often made with different seasonings or ingredients at each end, then marked with a knife (or with letters made out of leftover pastry) to show the initials of the person for which each end of the pasty was meant. Or a savory meat mixture might be put at one side of the pasty, and a fruit / dessert mixture at the other side. (Something else to mention here: the myth that the pastry was meant to be thick and hard enough to survive being dropped down the shaft of a tin mine is just that -- a myth.)

The recipe we share below is for the most basic and traditional Cornish pasty. It's adapted from a recipe / method that appears in Cornish Recipes, Ancient and Modern, a pamphlet first issued by the Cornwall Federation of Women's Institutes in 1929. (Our copy is dated 1959, the pamphlet's 20th edition.) It also suggests some variations that were commonplace when the pamphlet was published.

Click "Read more" for the recipe and method.

This essentially English comfort food has been around for at least a few hundred years, though the actual timing is a little uncertain. Over that time, the crumpet has gathered to itself a whole spectrum of meanings and associations in British culture: coziness, warmth, home and hearthside, the tea table loaded down with nice things... because where crumpets are, tea is usually not far behind. Toasted on one side under the grill or in the toaster or toaster oven, slathered with butter that seeps into all those lovely little holes... a crumpet is something special.

(Harry Potter readers, take note: where the US editions of the earlier HP books say "English muffin", they really mean crumpet. The US editors, then nervous about introducing too many British cultural references, substituted the closest North American breakfast breadstuff they could find -- but the texture and flavor of the crumpet are completely different from those of the English muffin.)

The Oxford English Dictionary tells us when the word first turned up in print, as a variant of the much older phrase "crompid cake":

[1694:Westmacott] They make Cakes of it (Buck Wheat)...as they do oat-cakes, and call it Crumpit. Crumpet...A soft cake made of flour, beaten egg, milk, and barm or baking powder, mixed into batter, and baked on an iron plate...Now usually a soft, round, doughy cake made with flour and yeast, cooked on a griddle or the like and usually eaten toasted with butter. [1769:Raffald] To make tea crumpets..."

The recipe may possibly have originated in the English Midlands as a variant of the older pancakes and griddle breads that were already commonplace. (There seem to be connections with the Welsh pancake called cremog and the Breton buckwheat krampoch.)

Naturally in the UK you can buy them in stores: but storebought crumpets can't really compare with the real thing made fresh just minutes before you eat it. The problem is that at first glance, it seems like a lot of work in that you wind up needing griddles, crumpet rings and so forth. But making crumpets is nowhere near as much work as it sounds like, and really rewards the effort. What's important is to find the right recipe.... and we've got it.

Click on "read more" for the recipe and method.