On Food and Cooking

Food    Words:  Cream,  Crème,  Panna

The English name for the fat-rich portion
of milk, like the French word from which it
derives, has associations that are startling
but appropriate to its status as a textural
ideal.
Before the Norman Conquest, and to
this day in some northern dialects, the
English word for cream was ream, a simple
offshoot of the Indo-European root that
also gave the modern German Rahm. But
the French connection introduced a
remarkable hybrid term. In 6th century
Gaul, fatty milk was called crama, from
the Latin cremor lactis, or “heat-thickened
substance of milk.” Then in the next few
centuries it somehow became crossed with
a religious term: chreme, or “consecrated
oil,” which stems from the Greek word
chriein, “to anoint,” that gave us Christ,
“the anointed one.” So in France crama
became crème, and in England ream gave