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Glite Dictionary
crème anglaise

crème anglaise

1 8.4
A thin sweet sauce made from eggs and milk, flavored with vanilla and served with desserts
  • noun
  • /krɛm æŋˈɡleɪz/
translation icon : crema inglesa
  • You can enhance the flavor of your dessert by drizzling it with crème anglaise.
  • crème anglaise custard
  • crème anglaise with fresh berries
  • pool of crème anglaise

Examples

  • For an elegant touch, serve fresh fruit alongside a small bowl of crème anglaise.

  • For dessert, we skipped the Blueberry Crisp with bacon crème anglaise (it was painful to do!) and instead had another drink.

    Blog text (21)

  • The chef paired the chocolate cake with a rich crème anglaise sauce for added decadence.

Synonyms

anglaise
vscrème anglaise
1 9.6

A thin sweet sauce of milk, eggs, and sugar that you pour over desserts

is thinner and specifically flavored with vanilla or a liqueur

How Thick

curd
4 2.1
custard
28 1.0
crème anglaise
1 8.4
sauce
569 1.0

Surface Forms

crème anglaise singular
crèmes anglaises plural
cremes anglaises plural
creme anglaise singular

Morphology

crème + anglaise

The parts 'crème' (cream) and 'anglaise' (literally 'English') indicate a cream-related dessert item, so a learner would likely infer it is some kind of cream or custard. However, the precise culinary sense — a thin, vanilla‑flavoured custard sauce served with desserts — is a specialized, conventionalized name borrowed from French and not fully predictable from ‘English cream,’ making the meaning only partly deducible.

Etymology

Crème anglaise literally means crème ('cream') and anglaise ('English'), and one popular story says French cooks used this name for a light, English-style custard. So crème anglaise now means a smooth, thin vanilla custard sauce you pour over desserts.