The root of the great Devon-versus-Cornwall debate, clotted cream is a pot of pure sunshine, says Julie Harding
RICH, sumptuously thick, spoon-able and ivory white, with a trademark primrose-coloured crust, indulgent clotted cream is created to partner many mouthwatering edibles. From apple pie and fresh strawberries to brownies, it can infuse something already delicious with further delectability. Part of the triumvirate that makes up a comforting, quintessentially British cream tea (let’s not complicate the scenario with butter), clotted cream and its partner in crime, jam, are the main players in a long-running ‘feud’ between the counties of Devon and Cornwall concerning which to spread first on those crumbly scones—of which more later.
Some say that clotted cream is a relatively recent interloper into the ritual of afternoon tea, introduced, apparently, in the early 20th century. However, the concoction itself could have been providing sustenance on these shores for 3,000 years—according to folklore, the Phoenicians brought the recipe to the West Country when they came in search of Cornish tin. Two decades ago, historians pouring over (no link to cream intended, you never pour the clotted variety; indeed, it requires much persuasion even to leave the spoon) old manuscripts found mention of the monks of Tavistock Abbey repaying the kindness of local labourers. They had put right the Viking damage of 997 and their reward was bread, clotted cream and strawberry preserve.
The poet Edmund Spenser mentions clotted cream in an early work, The Shepherdess Calender, writing: ‘Ne would she scorn the simple shepherd swain/For she would call him often heam/And give him curds and clouted cream.’ Victorian Prime Minister William Gladstone termed clotted cream ‘the food of the gods’;
J. R. R. Tolkien wrote of Gandalf eating ‘two whole loaves (with masses of butter and honey and clotted cream)’ in The Hobbit; and mystery-fiction queen Agatha Christie was said to drink copious amounts of the liquid variety and keep a pot of clotted near her desk. The cream Gladstone, Tolkien and Christie were familiar with would have been made by scalding whole milk or cream over a bain-marie, which urged the fat to rise to the top, forming that trademark crust. This, when cool, would have been scooped off by hand and layered into a dish.
Rodda’s had been making clotted cream this way for 30 years by the time Christie’s first presumably cream-fuelled novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, appeared in 1920. The company, based in Redruth, Cornwall, is still in business today, claiming the title of Britain’s oldest and largest producer.
‘We’re good at making our clotted cream the same all year round,’
