Clotted Cream Is the British Ingredient You Definitely Don't Need But Desperately Want

It's richer than whipped cream, more delicate than butter, and honestly less necessary than both. And yet those in the know can't live without it.
Overhead shot of plates with scones clotted cream cups of tea and a glass teapot.
Photo by Chelsie Craig, Prop Styling by Nathaniel James, Food Styling by Laura Rege

All products featured on Epicurious are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

英国有很多事情做。Tea.Reality television.Weddings.

But there's one thing Brits do better than anything else, and that's clotted cream.

Clotted cream is the most delicious thing in the world. Or, to put it more technically: it's a dairy product made by heating unpasteurized milk slowly in a shallow pan until the cream rises to the surface and thickens, orclots. The milk isleft to cool, and the creamy top is skimmed off and collected as clotted cream.

If you're thinking:How good could it be? It sounds similar to whipped cream or butter?—stop. Just stop. Clotted cream is better than both of those things because clotted cream isceremonious. It's essential to cream tea, the late-afternoon meal that's customary in Devon and Cornwall (in Devon clotted cream is sometimes referred to as Devonshire cream). And in America, clotted cream is served anywhere that is extra enough to serve a proper high tea—in other words, at expensive hotels you only visit once a year, around Christmas, with your richest aunt.

Clotted cream has the richness of butter but the creaminess of whipped cream. Asmy colleague Anyaput it, "it's everything you love about whipped cream, but better because it's thick." It's thick enough to sit on top of a scone rather than sink in; in that way, it creates the perfect bed for a layer of jam. (Though apparently there is some county-to-countydiscrepancybetween Devon and Cornwall about the right order of application: jam first, then cream, or cream first then jam.)

You can also drop a spoonful onto a steaming bowl of oatmeal and, asNigella Lawson suggests, "drizzle Lyle's Golden Syrup over it for the most luxurious, over-the-top, far-from-everyday breakfast." It's served with berries in the summer, on apple pie and sticky toffee pudding in the winter, and generally goes with any dessert where you want a little richness to cut through the sweetness. And in Devon and Cornwall—the southwestern corner of England where clotted cream purportedly originated—you'll sometimes see clotted cream as a topper for clotted creamice cream.

It's not an essential, multi-purpose ingredient—you don'tcookwith clotted cream, you can really onlygarnishwith it. But then again, versatility has never been its calling card. You should stock clotted cream to make things taste more special, more pleasurable, more weekend-in-the-British-countryside. As for thelogisticsof stocking it, well, it's not easy. It can be difficult to find in America. Luckily, in yet another mark of its superiority over butter and cream, clotted cream travels remarkably well.

The Devon Cream Company Clotted Cream
Clotted cream is our favorite British ingredient for making a bowl of oatmeal or a scone feel truly next-level.