Like browned butter? Try toasted cream

Browned butter’s ability to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary is nothing short of a miracle. The complex flavor that develops by heating the milk proteins adds depth to a variety of goods both sweet and savory. As Sohla El-Waylly of Serious Eats shows us, this amazing transformation also works with cream. 

Of course, once you think about it you wonder why we haven’t thought about it before. After all, butter is made from cream so it possesses the same luxurious fat. However, the extra liquid in cream makes it a bit more challenging to develop the Maillard reaction. With butter, the 15-20% additional liquid is easier to cook off, leaving only the fat and milk solids, which can then achieve the 300 degree Fahrenheit temperature where the Maillard reaction occurs quickly.

However, as El-Waylly notes, this reaction also occurs at lower temperatures, although it takes more time. Enter two kitchen appliances that allow you to either allow the cream to cook without keeping an eagle eye on it or bypass the wait altogether. The first of these is a sous vide device. Cooking the cream for a long time at a lower temperature brings out the nutty, caramel notes found in browned butter. Once browned, you can use the cream in any application you’d usually use it for, such as ice cream.

The other device is a pressure cooker. Cream cooked in this way gets even browner and takes on coffee and pretzel flavors, making it ideal to use in savory applications. Adding a pinch of baking soda (.25% by weight) to either application enhances the browning process and brings out additional flavors. The two cooking methods aren’t direct substitutes for one another, but rather provide different flavor profiles.