CAMBR I DGE ON A P L ATE
DR SUE BAILEY TAKES A SECOND SLICE OF FOOD HISTORY WITH THE HELP OF MORE CAMBRIDGE-BASED FOOD WRITERS, EXPLORING PUDDINGS AND POTIONS the second slice
here is a hot debate as to whether it was the famous Cambridge or Trinity burnt cream that came first, or the French dessert pretender, the crème brûlée. But what has the salamander lizard we mentioned last issue got to do with it, and why would you use one? There is a myth that salamander lizards can survive fire, which explains why, since the 1700s, a cast-iron, flame- heated disk called a salamander has been used to brown the tops of such dishes. Now however, a more advanced technology has taken over. So, although both a crème brûlée and the Cambridge burnt cream have caramelised sugar tops, the jury is out as to whether they are the same and which
came first. I spoke to Tristan Welsh – now head chef at Parker’s Tavern, who’s a long- term lover of this rich custard dish, and a passionate student of its history Tristan recounts: “College cooks were making a variant of this unctuous cooked cream dessert topped with scorched sugar long before French chefs ‘invented’ crème brûleé. But I love a bit of controversy, and I don’t mind a bit of disagreement with the French. I’ve been a passionate collector of antique recipe books since my youth and I’ve found references to this Cambridge recipe from 1740.” He agrees that to look forward, you always have to look back. “This is how a lot of these recipes came about in the first place – adapting to modern times. We now do a thin separate
64
A U G U S T 2 0 1 9
C A M B S E D I T I O N . C O . U K
Powered by FlippingBook