Can you explain this process?
Happy to!
So the recipe is just Dorie Greenspan’s crème anglaise. Dorie, for the uninitiated is essentially the Julia child of French baking. Her recipes are generally not particularly frufru, but all the ones I’ve tested from her have without exception, good.
From her site:
1 cup whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
6 large egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
Heat the milk and cream to a gentle bubble/boil. While you do, beat the egg yolks and sugar. Once the milk mix is heated, dribble into the eggs while whisking vigorously to temper them. Return the tempered mixture to the pan and heat to 170-175F, remove from heat, mix in vanilla extract and chill.
The nitro process is just using the nitropress DS. They claim it’s a nitrogenator, I remain dubious of their claims but either way it’s compressing and adding (depending on whether you believe the company), either atmospheric air, or nitrogen to the drink. The device makes it dead simple. Add chilled liquid to the whipped cream siphon, pressurize for 8 -15 seconds, shake for 1-2 minutes and dispense. The impact is no different then nitro or Guinness in my experience of playing with it. Nitrogen is far, far less soluble in liquid than CO2 or N2O (what they use in whipped cream due to its fat solubility), but the presence of protein stabilizes the bubbles which helps amplify the effect they have even with their limited solubility, which is one reason why Guinness works. I’ve found milk proteins work just as well for a sous vide coffee + milk mix.
I figured adding fat would be interesting because the texture you get off of it is already extremely creamy due to the very fine bubbles so I figured some form of light custard would be the best route. I was definitely right. It is frankly one of the best things I’ve drank on texture alone, and I’m shocked I’ve never seen it on a bar menu to date.
