Crémet d'Anjou

Crémet is a dairy specialty of Angers and the wider Anjou. Tradition links it to a cook named Marie Renéaume, who is said to have whipped cream together with beaten egg whites around 1890 and opened a dairy to sell it; the dessert had been noted in Anjou earlier, and the attribution is told as local lore rather than firm record. It was famously championed by Curnonsky, the Angevin writer crowned 'Prince of Gastronomes', who praised it as a masterpiece of French dessert. Purists distinguish the Angers crémet, made with whipped fresh farmhouse cheese, from the Anjou crémet of cream and egg white alone.

It is almost weightless — a cool, foamy cloud that collapses to cream on the tongue, faintly tangy from the fresh cheese, clean and milky. The pierced mould leaves a faint waffled imprint and lets the whey drain so the texture stays light, not wet. Pooled cream and the sharp brightness of raspberries or red currants set off the gentle dairy. Too sweet and it loses the point; the fruit's acidity is essential.

The lightness comes from two separately whipped foams. Cream is whipped to soft peaks for fat-stabilised air; egg whites are beaten to a meringue-like foam for protein-stabilised air; folding them — with whipped fresh cheese in the Angers style — combines both without knocking out the bubbles. The pierced, cloth-lined mould then drains excess whey and water under the dessert's own weight overnight in the cold, firming the mass just enough to unmould while keeping it airy. No cooking and no gelatin: structure is purely whipped foam plus drainage.