Friends of Erre4m, welcome back to our blog. Today we continue our journey through the vast world of pastry creams. The cream we will look at in this post is not all that well known, but if I say Saint Honoré, I suspect things will be rather different.
Today, as you can probably guess, our research tour moves to the land of our cousins across the Alps, namely France. Everyone, at least once in their life, has tasted the Saint Honoré cake (whether original or adapted); that is, the cake made with puff pastry or sponge cake and decorated with caramelised or chocolate-glazed choux buns, arranged along the edge or outlining its surface, and garnished with two-tone decorations of an incredibly soft cream that also forms the filling inside.
Well, the cream used for this world-famous cake, and often itself called Saint Honoré cream, actually has a very specific name, namely the surname of the man who invented it: August Julien Chiboust.
CHIBOUST CREAM, to be precise. Tradition has it that this master's patisserie (we are in the mid-19th century) stood on rue Saint Honoré in Paris and, the icing on the cake, the patron saint of French pastry chefs is Saint Honoré or Honoratus (bishop of Amiens in the 6th century AD). So we could say that it all fits together perfectly!
But then, after this preamble, why meringue cream? Simple: because the master pastry chef Chiboust did nothing more than lighten an ordinary pastry cream with Italian meringue. Et voilà the Chiboust cream in all its (apparent) simplicity!
Thanks to its excellent lightness, Chiboust cream is used as a filling for cakes and mignons or for glass desserts.
Now let us turn to the preparation. While the cream is still boiling, rehydrated animal gelatine sheets are added, and it is then combined with freshly prepared Italian meringue.
Normally, the percentages representing the proportion between the parts that make up the Chiboust cream are as follows:
60% pastry cream
39% Italian meringue
0,5–1% animal gelatine
In itself, this preparation is not complicated, although, as with everything, it calls for a few precautions:
- The milk for the cream must be whole and fresh, avoiding UHT milk
- For the cream, corn starch is recommended, as it produces a more stable result
- The starches and the gelatine must yield a stable cream that gives the Chiboust its proper creaminess
- Flavourings are a matter of taste and range from vanilla, chocolate and coffee to nut pastes, fruit and liqueurs, according to the taste of whoever is making it, and are added during the preparation of the pastry cream
- The egg whites should be used fresh and at room temperature, thus giving an excellent meringue
- To keep the Chiboust cream from graining (i.e. separating), the two masses (the pastry cream into the Italian meringue) must be folded together gently but continuously, without dragging the operation out too long, so that the heat does not coagulate the proteins of the whipped egg whites and cause graining
And, as usual, here are some recipes as a footnote. I offer you a triptych so you have a fairly complete picture for preparing Chiboust cream.
CHOCOLATE CHIBOUST CREAM
175g fresh whole milk
125g fresh liquid cream
150g egg yolk
20g corn starch
300g dark chocolate 70%
8g animal gelatine sheets
300g Italian meringue
METHOD
- Proceed as for the vanilla Chiboust cream
- Prepare the pastry cream with the first 4 ingredients of the recipe
- Once cooked, add first the chocolate, then the softened gelatine, and lastly the meringue
VANILLA CHIBOUST CREAM
250g fresh whole milk
45g egg yolk
38g caster sugar
25g corn starch
¼ vanilla pod seeds
3g animal gelatine sheets
ITALIAN MERINGUE
30g water
100g sugar
88g egg white
METHOD
- Weigh all the ingredients
- Prepare the Italian meringue, meanwhile heating the milk to 85°C as well
- When the meringue is ready, prepare the pastry cream with the first 5 ingredients of the recipe
- Once cooked, add the softened gelatine, mix and fold in the Italian meringue a little at a time, using the Chiboust cream immediately
FRUIT CHIBOUST CREAM
450g fruit puree
250g fresh liquid cream
150g egg yolk
38g caster sugar
30g corn starch
15g animal gelatine sheets
450g Italian meringue
METHOD
- Weigh all the ingredients
- Prepare the Italian meringue, meanwhile heating the fruit puree with the cream to 85°C
- When the meringue is ready, prepare the pastry cream with the first 5 ingredients of the recipe
- Once cooked, add the softened gelatine, mix and fold in the Italian meringue a little at a time, using the Chiboust cream immediately
ENJOY YOUR WORK, AND OVER TO YOU FOR THE COMMENTS!!!
Blog by Enrico Gumirato, pastry chef and trainer
