[Modernist Cuisine at Home] Pastry Cream

[Anonymous Modernist 13398]

Should the egg yolk for the pastry cream really be cooked at 80C? It seems rather firm, not to say rubbery. Worked fine for chocolate pastry cream yesterday mind you.

[Sam Fahey-Burke]

jpwright,

Yes, 80 °C is the correct temperature.

Sam.

[Anonymous Modernist 17857]

no, 80 C temperature is not correct.Please used 70 C to cooked and this helps you to protect from rubbery plastics of your ice creams.

[Anonymous Modernist 16163]

I made the pastry cream. I was also surprised at the almost crumbly consistent of the cooked yolk. Yet amazingly when I processed in the blender to make the cream, it worked perfectly and the cream was incredibly smooth and delicious. A great result! Now I wonder if I can convert all my egg thickened recipes in this way and if so how to do it. Plenty of ice cream base recipes call for heating milk, tempering egg, and then heating the entire mix to 180F. As a general substitute process, should I experiment with a. mixing egg,sugar,cream and heating sous vide in a zip lock to 180 and holding for some period of time? OR b. heating egg yolk sous vide and then blending with milk/sugar/cream mix? The idea of whipping up an ice cream base sous vide, without stirring or pots and pans and being able to apply that technique generally to my egg based ice cream recipes sounds fantastic.

[Anonymous Modernist 15279]

I'm curious: what's the advantage of doing the cream the way presented in the book (so cooking the eggs sous vide to 80C, blending to paste, blending in milk) vs blending everything in the first step and cooking the mixture sous vide after?

[Anonymous Modernist 19617]

I think 80C is sufficient.