What Is Double cream and How Can I Use It?

Here's everything worth knowing about double cream and how to pick it, what it is, how to store it, and what to use instead, plus 50 recipes to cook tonight.

What is double cream?

Double cream is the rich British cream, with a butterfat content of about 48 percent. That is the highest of the everyday creams, well above US heavy cream, and the name comes from carrying roughly double the fat of single cream.

All that fat makes double cream thick and spoonable. It pours slow and whips fast.

It also shrugs off heat and acid that would split a lighter cream.

What It Does

Double cream is the workhorse of British puddings and pies. It pours straight over a warm Apple & Barley Pudding, whips into the filling of a No-bake Strawberry, White chocolate & Vanilla Cheesecake, and bakes into savory dishes like a Chicken & Leek Pie.

In a hot sauce it is forgiving. The high fat means you can boil it and add wine or lemon without the curdling that plagues thinner creams, which is why British cooks reach for it when a sauce has to reduce or hold.

It whips in seconds and over-whips just as fast. Because it is already so fat-heavy, a few extra turns push it from soft folds to stiff to grainy.

Go gently and stop early.

US Heavy Cream Versus Double Cream

The two are close cousins, not equals. US heavy cream is 36 percent or more fat; double cream is around 48 percent. Double cream is noticeably thicker and richer, and it whips stiffer and faster.

For most recipes heavy cream stands in fine. Where a British recipe leans on the extra body, such as a cream you spoon rather than pour or a sauce reduced hard, heavy cream can come out thinner.

Substitutes

Outside Britain, the closest swap is heavy or whipping cream at 36 percent. To push it richer, stir a spoonful of mascarpone or a knob of melted butter into heavy cream to lift the fat toward double-cream territory.

Double cream is also easy to thin. A splash of milk or water loosens it to roughly single-cream consistency when a recipe wants something lighter.

Buying and Storage

Double cream is a UK and Commonwealth product, found in the chilled dairy aisle there and rarely on US shelves. Look for "double cream" on the label; "extra-thick double cream" is the same fat but mechanically thickened to spoon, and it will not whip.

Keep it cold at the back of the fridge and use within a few days of opening. It is stable enough to freeze for cooking, though like all cream it separates on thawing and is best whisked into a hot dish rather than whipped.

Nutrition

Quick facts

Food group: Double cream is a member of the Dairy and Egg Products US Department of Agriculture nutritional food group.

In Chinese

双霜

British (UK) term

Double cream

en français

double crème

en español

crema doble

How much does double cream weigh?

Related

Dairy and Egg Products

Recipes using double cream

There are 50 recipes that contain this ingredient.

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Cawl Cennin a Hufebn

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Clare's Meringue Roulade

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English Meringue

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Apple & Barley Pudding (Irish)

A delicious dish made with pearl barley, juicy apples and a bit of double cream that just might make you lucky like the Irish!

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