Fleurette (cream) : The whipping cream, milk flower, or tea cream (unprotected designations), is an agricultural food product from the milk believed. It is the first very fluid cream that forms above the milk.
Etymology: From Latin flowers, flowers, “flower, finest part of something”; "best part of something" hence "upper part" and "surface of something". In the Du Cange (*): flur, “elite, the best of something”.
Agricultural terminology: fleur de lait, a phrase that seems to have been formed in Normandy for the cream that is flush with the surface of the milk.
(*) Charles du Fresne, sieur du Cange or Du Cange is a French historian, linguist and philologist, born on December 18, 1610 in Amiens and died on October 23, 1688 in Paris.
Method of obtaining whipping cream: This is the (raw) cream that forms naturally on the surface of raw milk stored in the ambient air, after twelve hours in summer or twenty-four hours in winter. It is then enough to collect this flower of cream.
Other raw creams: Raw cream, sold with this obligatory mention on the label, is most often obtained using a manual or electric cream separator, depending on its origin, from farm production or the dairy industry. The matured raw cream is thickened by the process of maturation.
Raw cream is not used in collective catering in France.
Use of the term “fleurette”: The term “fleurette cream” is used by dairy and catering professionals. It is a liquid fresh cream which, according to the regulations, “should only have undergone the pasteurization treatment. Such a cream must not have been matured or sterilized”. Pasteurized cream can be obtained by cream separator-centrifuge. From 7 to 10 liters of cow's milk are necessary to have 1 kilogram of cream with at least 30% fat.
Other so-called “fleurette” creams are produced by agro-industry and the dairy industry. They have their own texture and organoleptic characteristics, different from those of the original whipping cream. They are made from pasteurized milk standardized in protein and fat giving a liquefied cream by subsequent addition of milk. They contain emulsifiers (E471 or E472b), thickeners (carrageenan, xanthan), added to processed starch and stabilizers (E460, E440, E466, E407) in light creams.
Culinary uses of whipping cream : The whipping cream is liquid and soft in the first days, then it thickens and its taste is pronounced. With a shelf life limited to 7 days at +6°C4, it is used in the same recipes as liquid crème fraîche and thick crème fraîche.
As raw cream, it is the essential ingredient for making a butter believed.
Raw cream should be consumed with caution by pregnant women, raw milk may have been contaminated during collection and may contain a bacterium, Listeria monocytogenes.
Check Creme fraiche Cheese.