Milk and cream
Crème fraîche
Thick, lightly sour cultured cream that holds up in a hot sauce without curdling.
Crème fraîche is cream thickened by lactic cultures, with a gentle sourness and a high fat content. In France it is a daily kitchen ingredient: stirred into sauces, soups and gratins, spooned over tarts and fruit. Because of its fat, it can be boiled without splitting, which makes it more useful in cooking than lighter soured creams.
What goes in
- Cream1077%, High in fat.
- Lactic cultures18%, Or a spoon of buttermilk.
- Gentle warmth215%, Half a day to a day.
Rough parts by weight. The ring shows each input's share of the product.
Made step by step
Each drawing shows the operation for that step. Quantities and timings differ from house to house and herd to herd; this is one traditional way, in outline.
Step 1: Milk Separate the cream from fresh milk. Step 2: Ferment Stir in lactic cultures or a little buttermilk. Step 3: Set Leave it in a warm room until thick. Step 4: Set Chill it, which thickens it further. Step 5: Serve Spoon it into sauces or over tarts. Finished Crème fraîche, by share.
Normandy and Bresse
Before pasteurisation, cream skimmed from milk soured naturally and thickened as it waited to be churned. France kept that cream as a product in its own right. Crème d'Isigny from Normandy and crème de Bresse from the east both hold protected designations of origin, and Normandy cooking is known for its sauces of cream, butter and cider.
In the kitchen
Crème fraîche finishes sauces for chicken and fish, binds quiche fillings and lies under a slice of apple tart. It thickens further as it is whipped. In Normandy, a sauce normande combines it with butter and stock. The English name is French for fresh cream, though it is in fact soured.
Where it is used
The breeds behind it
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Sources and further reading
Original text and drawings by the EveryCow desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. The shares are a rough, illustrative ratio, not a recipe: every family and dairy makes it differently. If we have something wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Normande: Tsaag Valren, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Holstein Friesian: Vista Alegre baserria, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Montbéliarde: Abujoy, CC BY-SA 3.0, source