This is adapted from Damon Lee Fowler's cookbooks on classical and new Southern cuisine. He describes the texture as being similar to clotted cream. It is a simple and wonderful sauce to serve with fresh fruit and/or a plain cake. I vary the amount of lemon rind and nutmeg depending on the application.
- 1 pt heavy cream (minimum 36% milkfat)
- 1/2 c sugar
- 1 lemon (finely grated zest of whole lemon and strained juice of half)
- nutmeg, freshly grated
Dissolve sugar in the cream without heating the mixture. Add in the finely grated zest of 1/2-1 whole lemon and add in strained juice of half the lemon. Stir mixture until it begins to clot slightly and season it with some freshly grated nutmeg. Refrigerate until fully thickened; at least 3-4 hours. Serve cold.
The freshly grated nutmeg is really a key component in my opinion. You can add more to have a stronger nutmeg flavor, but even if you don’t want an ostensibly “nutmeg-flavored sauce” adding some nutmeg in lesser amounts creates an ineffable, but delicious, final flavor. So, I would add the nutmeg sparingly and taste to achieve the flavor you want. Grating the nutmeg on a small, fine plane grater works just as well as using a dedicated nutmeg grater.
I haven't experimented with decreasing the sugar, but that may be one avenue to explore. Another interesting variation may be to replace the lemon rind and juice with other citrus like tart oranges, tangerines, limes or Meyer lemons, but I haven’t tried this yet. I don’t know if all these citrus have the proper acidity to thicken the cream under these conditions.
Keywords: Dessert, Vegetarian, Easy, Sauce, Topping/Frosting, American, British
( RG1644 )
