Jefferson’s Tea Cream

For the past few years, chefs have been using tea to flavor desserts like sorbets and custards and to poach pears and other fresh fruits. This is actually a revival of an old practice from the days before commercial extracts were available, when tea was widely used as a dessert flavoring.

This tea cream is based on a dessert from Monticello, which was itself modeled after a French recipe. It’s extraordinary: The cream has a beautifully smooth texture, with a lucid, shimmering surfac