1,568 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies necessary for its operation. By continuing to browse, you accept their use.
To find out more...

Tranché, dissociated, failed, in short... missed!

When preparing a sauce or a cream, there's always a (small) risk that the creamy preparation you're working on will suddenly separate into two parts of different textures: a liquid part, for example, and a more or less solid part, or even become lumpy.

It's terribly frustrating, but we'll see that it's not always irremediable, and that you can try to make up for it with a few simple gestures.

14 K 5/5 (2 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Sauce Cream Tranché Missed Catching up Tip Trick Recovery

Last modified on: June 19^th 2023

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

Tranché, dissociated, failed, in short... missed!

I've already talked to you about the rather special case of warm emulsified sauces (béarnaise, hollandaise) and how to make up for them in the event of tragedy, so I won't go into that again, but this time we'll concentrate a little on creams.

Tranchée?

When a cream "tranche", a french chef word, it's simply no longer homogeneous: instead of a single part, there are several parts in the bowl or saucepan, of different textures, liquid and solid in general.
That's just what "tranchée" means: the taste is unaffected, but the texture is completely, and we amateurs simply say "missed", "failed", "screwed up" or many other terms...

What's happened?

It's difficult to make a general rule but it can be summed up as "There was too much..." or sometimes "There wasn't enough...".
Too much can be an ingredient, a duration, a temperature.
Too much of what? Well, that's where it becomes very much a question of the preparation you were doing, so let's look at a few emblematic cases.

The custard

the custard you started with suddenly turns into a big lumpy mess, you've probably overcooked it by more than 185°F (85°C), or cooked it too quickly (over a hot fire).
To make up for this, try giving it a good whirl with the mixer.

crème anglaise

A ganache

A ganache that tranche is very often a temperature problem: the chocolate begins to set on its own, resulting in lumps, because the temperature of the mixture is heterogeneous.
To make up for this, try putting it in the microwave for a few seconds, before whisking or even mixing vigorously, to bring the mixture back to an even temperature.

ganache chocolat

A mixture of cream + an acidic ingredient

If you add lemon juice directly to crème fraiche (for example), there's a great risk that it will curdle, which is normal, and therefore slice. To avoid this, you can 1) use liquid cream, for which there is less risk 2) add a pinch of bicarbonate of soda to the lemon juice, which will foam up a little but is harmless.
Note that in this case, cream that curdles is unfortunately irrecoverable: your cream has turned into cheese.

crème et jus de citron

To sum up: although cream curdling can be very stressful during preparation, it's not always irreversible, and can often be remedied by a simple gesture.

Lasts posts

A tablet holder

Perhaps you too cook by consulting your recipe on a tablet or phone, and putting it down on your worktop? It's practical, but not the best solution. Here's a look at how you can make an inexpensive, almost universal stand.
March 14^th 20261,2325

Pre-calibrated pastry dough

When making pie dough (shortbread, shortcrust, sweet...), it's always a good idea to make a lot at once, and then divide it into pieces, which you can freeze. I've already pointed out the mistake not to make, which is to form a ball before freezing. It's difficult to roll out afterwards because...
March 9^th 20261,1645

Butter vs. grease

We often read in a recipe where a pastry is put into a mould that, just before pouring, the mould should be buttered or greased. But what's the difference between these 2 terms?
December 1^st 20253,2175

Getting out of the fridge early

Very often when you're cooking, you need to take food or preparations out of the fridge, to use them in the recipe in progress. There's nothing tricky about this: you just take them out of the fridge and use them, usually immediately, in the recipe. But is this really a good method?
November 24^th 20252,1365

Who's making the croissants?

When you look at a bakery from the outside, you naturally think that in the bakery, the bakers make the bread, and in the laboratory, the pastry chefs make the cakes. It's very often like that, with each of these professions having quite different ways of working, but sometimes there's also one...
November 23^th 20251,956

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

The art of the charlotte

In cooking, a charlotte is a delicious moulded dessert, with biscuits around the outside that have been soaked in a flavoured syrup, filled with a light cream or mousse. The charlotte is left to set in the fridge before being turned out and served in slices. It is very light and a lovely sweet...
February 27^th 201347 K4.3

Egg yolks and caster sugar

We often come across recipes where we need to mix egg yolks with caster sugar. This would appear to be a very ordinary and simple thing to do but, be warned, these two ingredients can behave oddly together.
February 15^th 201885 K 24.3

The golden-brown finish on puff pastry

Let's take a look at the tricky matter of producing puff pastry with an attractive, golden-brown finish. French pastry chefs call this "dorure" (literally, "gilding"). Behind this quirky term there lurks a real problem (and the solution): when using puff pastry (pâte feuilletée) for a pie, or...
February 8^th 201849 K 24.6

The so-called "nervous" meats

You've probably heard this before, we're talking about "nervous" meat, or meat with nerves, to describe what is indicated by the blue arrow on the left. This is a piece of beef, and what we call a nerve is not a nerve, it is in fact collagen (chemists sometimes call it a "collagen sink"), a...
April 16^th 202139 K4.5

Don't throw away your pizza crusts

You've probably already noticed that at the end of a pizza meal, at least half of the participants have left the crusts in the boxes or on the plates that many don't eat. Naturally, one would tend to put them "to the birds", or worse, to throw them away, and it's a shame because they are in fact...
April 22^th 202311 K4.9