Clabber Cream

Clabber Cream
Clabber Cream is a spooning cream rather than a pouring cream.

It isn't made much anymore.

To make it, unpasteurized milk was set out to stand until the cream rose to the top. During this time, bacteria in the milk would eat the lactose sugar in the milk, converting it into lactic acid, which in turned thickenedthe milk by making minute curdles in it.

Even though the cream was removed from the top, the milk underneath would be thicker than it was when it started, anyway. The milk and cream also acquired a slight sour cream taste, somewhat similar to yoghurt in flavour.

This can't be done with pasteurized milk or cream, because the bacteria needed will have been killed off. The milk won't clabber, it will just go sour. Consequently, if you wanted to make Clabber Cream at home, you'd have to buy commercial clabber cream to use some of it as a starter to put in pasteurized full-fat milk. But then once you'd bought the Clabber Cream, you wouldn't really have any need to make it.

Clabber Cream is not the same as clotted cream (aka Devon Cream.)

Clabber Cream is very, very similar to créme fraîche, but Clabber Cream is thicker, more like a smooth ricotta.

In the southern states of America, Clabber Cream was very popular. It would be served in a dish with sugar, fruit, cinnamon and brown sugar, or salt and black pepper on top, or used as a dessert topping.

Creole cream cheese is made from Clabber Cream.

Butter can also be churned from Clabber Cream.

Substitutes
To clabber soymilk, per cup (8 oz / 250 ml) of soymilk, mix in 2 teaspoons of white vinegar or lemon juice.

To make modern pasteurized milk clabber, add buttermilk to it.

Language Notes
Also called "clabbered cream".

Called "bainne clabair" in Irish; "Racreme" in Swedish.

See Language Notes in the entry on Clabbered Milk for a discussion of the word "Clabber."

Also called: Loppered Cream