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Cream is thicker than blood: the rise and fall of the Devon split
- nikolay 3y agoI buy it here in California although it's expensive. I love it!
- zhengyi13 3y agoChef John has a recipe to make it yourself if you want to invest the time. I've not done it myself, but he's usually pretty good with stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDyyAb6lB48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDyyAb6lB48
- voakbasda 3y agoWe love Chef John, and we recently started growing a herd of American Milking Devon cows. This breed traces its lineage directly back to Devon, but they have become extremely rare (with less than a thousand animals in existence). I can’t wait to try to make this recipe with their milk.
- ducttapecrown 3y agoThis is truly a Hacker News moment. Genuine. Certified. Thank you for sharing, that's awesome! Are the Devon cows extremely rare, or the American Milking Devon cows?
- voakbasda 3y agoThe Devon breed were among the very first cattle brought to the New World and were once immensely popular. The American Milking Devon breed branched off of the Red Devon lines in the mid-20th century, as the later started to move away from dual-purpose in favor of meat production. Now, both are relatively rare in comparison to common commercial dairy and meat breeds, respectively. The margins are too thin in commodity markets to justify breeding anything but the most productive animals (e.g. Angus). As I understand it, the original Devon breed in England remains quite popular.
- seabass-labrax 3y agoVery interesting! It would make sense to sail across to the New World with the cattle breeds which were immediately available by the ports, which from the British Isles were of course mostly in Devon. > As I understand it, the original Devon breed in England remains quite popular. I would say that's right; you definitely see them around in Devon, where they outnumber the Holstein-Friesians which seen to otherwise dominate the European dairy cow population.
- voakbasda 3y agoIn addition to being regionally available, the Devon breeds are well-rounded triple-purpose animals; in addition to providing meat and milk, they are suitable for draft (e.g. pulling carts and plows), though you don't see them used much for that in modern times.
- nikolay 3y agoIn the Balkans, it's called "kajmak," and it's very popular. Update: kajmak [0] seems to be slightly different and mildly fermented. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaymak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaymak
- hehhehaha 3y agokajmak and honey is 'chefs kiss'
- nsxwolf 3y agoI can’t eat something named “clotted cream”.
- philk10 3y agoYou're missing out then, it's delicious
- oldpersonintx 3y ago[dead]
- daotoad 3y agoDoesn't sound great, but it is delicious. It's just cream that's been gently heated for an extended time to denature the proteins a bit. Not all that different in spirit from fresh cheeses (though cheesemakers denature the proteins by acidification or enzymatic methods).
- thenewwazoo 3y agoWhen I was a child in the 80s, my (Chinese) dad used to order "bean curd" in restaurants when we visited big city Chinese restaurants. I always found the name unappetizing in the extreme. Today, of course, I love tofu.
- KineticLensman 3y agoIt is perhaps for this reason that "black pudding" has the name that it does [0], rather than the more accurate "blood sausage" [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pudding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pudding
- xen0 3y agoAs someone from Cornwall, the pictures in the article don't look right. Clotted cream is much thicker; those cakes look like they're made with whipped cream.
- Tokkemon 3y agoYeah it looks like whipped cream (chantilly) in the splits. Isn't that correct?
- xen0 3y agoI think one might struggle to pipe clotted cream, or produce anything so 'elegant' with it. It's thick, being mostly fat (often >60%). At least in Cornwall, it's often bought in plastic tubs like ice cream (it will hold its shape, not flow), not jars or bottles.
- hgomersall 3y agoI expect not chantilly, just plain whipped cream.
- kwhitefoot 3y agoDefinitely whipped cream, but then it is a London bakery. Mind you not everyone in Devon takes cream seriously. I was at Darts Farm shop outside Exeter last summer and saw a stand advertising a Devon Cream Tea with a plast pot of Rodda's!
- xanderlewis 3y agoWhat’s wrong with Rodda’s?
- clort 3y agoRoddas is great stuff! However, it is cornish so perhaps not appropriate for a Devon Cream Tea?
- 3y ago
- geodel 3y agoI buy this[1] from Indian store, my spouse loves it. 1. https://www.karouncheese.com/product/malai-breakfast-cream-spread-8-oz/1026 https://www.karouncheese.com/product/malai-breakfast-cream-s...
- h4ch1 3y agoyou can make it yourself! just boil some raw (even pasteurized works afaik), and keep it uncovered inside the refrigerator overnight. in the morning you'll have thick malai (cream) on the top which you can scoop up and enjoy with anything. i personally have it cold topped with crystallized sugar as a monthly treat :)
- geodel 3y agoIt worked back in India and my mom used to do all the time. Malai was my nemesis and I'd drink milk strained twice, just to make sure no tiny bits of malai left in milk. LOL. So naturally I never enjoyed this treat.
- ghoul2 3y agoOh wow. I thought this was just my personal quirk. I absolutely cannot tolerate malai in my milk. I (involuntarily) spit the milk out if the mouthful happened to have even small bits of malai.
- Tokkemon 3y agoClotted Cream is possibly England's greatest invention, apart from perhaps the Westminster System of government.
- Tokkemon 3y agoI suppose the railway engine is up there.... and the subway.... hmm
- dontlaugh 3y agoThe system of government is an arcane disaster, unlike clotted cream.
- simonh 3y agoIt’s arguably now a fair bit more modern than the US system which hasn’t been meaningfully reformed since the 18th Century. For example the US president is essentially just an elected George III.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago> It’s arguably now a fair bit more modern than the US system which hasn’t been meaningfully reformed since the 18th Century. I am sorry, that is simply not true. Abolition of slavery? Votes for non-property owners? Votes for minorities? Votes for women? Votes for 18-year-olds? Incorporation of the Bill of Rights to the states? Prohibition (and its repeal)? Switching from (mostly) excise taxes to income taxes to fund the government? Those are just some of the high points. Probably the most significant (yet rarely appreciated) change is that the Vice President is no longer the person who received the second-highest number of electoral votes. It was realized early on what a monumentally bad idea that was. Trump with Hillary Clinton as VP? Biden with Trump as VP? Scary indeed. One can only speculate how many more assassinations and "accidents" there would have been over the years had that not been altered.
- sickofparadox 3y ago
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoUnquestionably one of the great inventions of the modern age. I take issue with the repeated use of 'churn' to describe ordinary milk cans. A churn has a dasher and paddle, to turn cream into butter. Nothing described nor pictured in the article is a churn.
- seabass-labrax 3y ago> A churn has a dasher and paddle, to turn cream into butter. Nothing described nor pictured in the article is a churn. Perhaps this is a local difference in terminology? Those things the men are unloading from the train are definitely milk churns to me. I'm no dairy production expert, but I am a Devonian :)
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoWhat do you call the thing that butter is made in, then?
- Reason077 3y agoLooks quite similar to Swedish semlor, although those are flavoured with cardamom so no doubt the flavour is quite different!
- andrewgilmartin 3y agoClotted cream is my greatest loss moving from Dartmouth, Devon to the US. A vanilla ice cream cone with clotted cream and a Cadbury flake is unparalleled. And a Mother’s Bread sandwich with clotted cream and strawberry jam being next in line.
- deaddodo 3y agoThere's clotted cream (and double cream, treacle, golden syrup, mixed spice, etc) in every major American metro I've ever been in. Look for a British import shop. Or, if you're in New England, SoCal, etc, you might just find domestically produced stuff (Gelson's in LA has it, for instance).
- mhh__ 3y agoOne side of my family owned a creamery in Devon for many years — probably not a surprise that heart problems were frequent.
- hugs 3y agoIf you have the time, and an oven you trust to run a long time, you can make your own clotted cream. Just make sure to start with cream that is not ultra-pasteurized. The "recipe" is pretty simple. It's not even really a recipe: 1) Pour cream in pan. 2) Cook at low-temp (175-ish degrees Fahrenheit) for 12-ish hours. I made this a couple of times during the peak of my cooking experiments during the pandemic. It really is amazingly delicious. Maybe we should all start calling it "Devonshire cream" instead of "clotted cream". There are people that will never try it only because of the name, which is unfortunate. Here's the recipe I followed: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/257734/chef-johns-clotted-cream/ https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/257734/chef-johns-clotted-...
- CarVac 3y agoUltra-pasturized makes for a lovely rich flavor though. Or maybe that was because I used too large a pan and it dried out too much? Or both? It was better than what I've had in restaurants, for what it's worth.
- MaysonL 3y agoReading this, I remembered that early in my childhood, we actually had a milkman delivering milk to our home a couple times a week. (In New Jersey, USA, in the 1950s)