How do you say “whipping cream” or “heavy cream” in French?
I had tried with crème fraîche épaisse, but that didn’t work. I forget what the recipe was, but my cream didn’t rise no matter how hard I whipped. In fact, we ended up with butter (and it was delicious).
Crème fraîche épaisse (thick fresh cream) is similar to sour cream, though not quite as sour. And it comes in full fat–entière–or light–légère. Sometimes even lighter than light. Usually it’s in a tub, but we recently saw it in these soft packages.
Then there’s crème fraîche liquide (liquid fresh cream), but it can have a wide variety of fat content, even when it’s entière. The one for whipping is labeled fleurette.
I cannot believe it took me this long to discover but there is actually a star system for crème fraîche.
Is it good for a sauce in a poêle (saucepan), or is it better in the four (oven)? Or for chantilly (whipped cream)? Four stars for whipped cream–bingo.
The dairy products section of a French supermarket is vast. There’s an entire aisle for yogurt, and sometimes two for cheese. Milk, however, tends to be sold in UHT (ultra-high temperature) packages that don’t need to be refrigerated. Crème fraîche also is available in UHT packages. The fresh crème fraîche section usually is near the butter.
There’s a sweet song about whipped cream that’s usually sung as a round (canon in French). While anglophone kids grow up singing “row, row, row the boat,” French kids sing an ode to whipped cream. That kind of sums things up. Here’s an adorable video of three teachers trying to herd cats direct a choir of little ones. Maybe you can detect the melody.
Battez la crème, Battez la crème, Battez la crème, Battez la crème
De la crème fraîche que l’on fouette gaiement
Parfum vanille, un peu de sucre blanc
On l’aime à la folie, la crème chantilly
Beat the cream, beat the cream, beat the cream, beat the cream
Some fresh cream that we whip gaily
Vanilla flavor, a little white sugar
We love it crazily, the whipped cream
Taste of France 
Thanks for this brilliant post, we were searching for sour cream the other day and did eventually buy crème fraiche as it seemed the best option 🙂 Great info on the star system, will keep an eye out for it next time we are shopping for cream 🙂
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Crème fraîche is fermented a little, which makes it more sour than U.S. heavy cream but not as sour as sour cream.
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Great post! I’ve also struggled with these different types of cream but never truly investigated the differences. One hint I find helpful: if you want to turn regular heavy cream into sour cream, just add a tablespoon of lemon juice. Greek yogurt is also a good substitute.
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Yes–I do that to make buttermilk, too. I also had read that you need at least 30% fat for the cream to whip up. But an older woman at the supermarket swore she makes chantilly with light cream.
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Thank you, thank you, thank you! I’ve been want to know for ages.
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Bon appétit!
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Great explanation…..I always wondered about this. It’s sometimes hard to get an answer.
Ali
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In case you cook while you’re here….
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You can make your own vanilla extract if you can get whole vanilla bean pods and vodka.
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Thanks! That’s really cooking from scratch! Vanilla bean pods are pretty easy to find. Usually I just bring back a few bottles of extract from the U.S. because the bottles here are so tiny and expensive.
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It is always SO puzzling buying cream in France! I drink half and half here, in my tea, and spend hours (slight exaggereration..) looking at all the packages in France. I think I eneded up with with square package “Fleurette Entiere” and with a good shake each time, it was just fine. But it’s always been a mystery. I do love the yogurt aisles in your stores!!!
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Fleurette entière is heavy cream–30-35% fat. Yummy!
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You need to be careful with anything labelled fleurette. Technically it is the cream that rises to the top of the milk and is scraped off, but of course, that product doesn’t exist commercially. The word fleurette has been adopted by the dairy industry to indicate that it is whipping cream, but there is no legal definition for its use in food labelling, so it can be as low as 15% or even 5% occasionally. You wouldn’t be able to whip cream with that low a fat content. What many French people (and virtually all chefs in France) do is add a ‘chantilly mix’ which is vanilla sugar plus a stabilising gum which means you can whip just about anything probably (I don’t know how low a fat content it will allow you to go to exactly). I use crême crue which is delivered to the house by the producer. It’s about 40% fat and will turn to butter if you are not careful. The best way to deal with it is to add a tablespoon or two of milk (or fruit liqueur) to a pot of cream before whipping, effectively dropping the fat content just a bit. Crême crue and crême entière are the same thing, except that crue must be unpasturised, entière must be pasturised. Both must have a minimum of 30% fat. Both are thickened with a lactic culture and are therefore a type of crême fraîche or crême épaisse. Crême liquide means that no lactic culture has been added but it must have a minimum fat content of 30%. There are no regulations covering the term crême fluide but it is generally used to cover cream that has a lower fat content than crême fraiche but not low enough that the manufacturer wants to highlight the fact. Any cream with lower than 30% fat can be labelled legère, but generally only cream with 5 – 15% is labelled that way.
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Wow, this is comprehensive! Thank you!
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It took me a while to figure out the different creams with the help of a teacher of French cooking who lives in nearby Vaison-la-Romaine. I did a number of recipes with various creams when we were in Sablet a few weeks back, but she was away. I thought at the time, I got it right. Your post confirms that I do have it down … finally. Thanks for your post.
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Recipes with creams sound like a good idea.
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I remember trying to find sour cream when we lived in Paris…and its so great that we can get creme fraiche in the US now!
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Yes, crème fraîche is a little bland compared to sour cream, if you’re putting it on top of, say, a taco salad. Not exactly the same.
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OMG. This just makes my head spin. I would have to spend hours in the supermarket (I am the shopper that reads labels carefully) Thank goodness we only have about 2 or 3 types of cream in Australian supermarkets. I make crème Chantilly with what we call thickened cream.
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I wonder whether that’s like crème fraîche épaisse–thick cream.
I bet you have it even worse in the yogurt aisle!
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When asked if we want Chantilly on our dessert we know it to be the squishy stuff out of an aerosol can. Mainly gas, and not a bit like ‘proper’ whipped double cream of the UK! Mind you, fewer calories so it’s not all bad. My problems start when I read to add a cream in a recipe and I’m not sure which to substitute.
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I’m not so sure the aerosol stuff has fewer calories (lots of sugar), which is even worse!
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The star system is news to me. Thanks for the tip!
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May your chantilly always rise.
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Oh how I searched for whipping cream when I first moved to France!! It’s a little easier to find nowadays, even the discount stores now have creme entiere! I used to be able to find liquid vanilla extract in the bakery sections of the grands surfaces (vahine?), but of late it’s been mostly powered vanilla, which I don’t like as much.
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Even entière can be too low in fat content–it needs to be at least 30%. Have to read the label…or look for the stars.
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I learnt to read the labels after several failures :D. Had to a abandon many a mousse in those days – I would turn it into pannacotta today, but then the craze hadn’t reached me…
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