How to use gelatin

Clarified butter

This is a way of melting butter to eliminate all the impurities. The clarified butter can then be heated without spoiling, and is more digestible. It is ideal for cooking at high temperatures where small black specks would spoil the appearance, or for emulsified sauces like béarnaise or mousseline.

Real custard sauce (crème anglaise)

Real custard or vanilla sauce consists of egg yolks beaten with sugar and cooked slowly in vanilla milk. It is the base or the accompaniment for many desserts.

Hachis parmentier

This is the French answer (meat with mashed potato and cheese) to the English cottage or shepherd's pie: a typical family recipe which is an excellent way of using up leftover meat. The proportions are vague here: you need "whatever you have left over"...

How to glaze a tart

Professional pastrycooks usually say that "a beautiful cake is already half sold", it is one of the reasons why they do not put a tart on sale without glazing it ("abricoter" in Fench), i.e. coating it with a thick apricot syrup. This glaze gives a glossy finish to the tart (see the photographs below) and also protects it from the air and thus from oxidation and browning. It's a quite simple technique that you can easily apply to give to your desserts a professional look. This is how you do it.

Mayonnaise

Mayonnaise is a cold egg dressing, quite thick, served with many dishes, usually cold too: meat, fish, vegetables, etc.