2. To take off the best or choicest part of.
3. To furnish with, or as with, cream.
Creaming the fragrant cups. --Mrs.
Whitney.
{To cream butter} (Cooking), to rub, stir, or beat, butter
till it is of a light creamy consistency.
There are a sort of men whose visages Do cream and
mantle like a standing pool. --Shak.
2. The part of any liquor that rises, and collects on the
surface. [R.]
3. A delicacy of several kinds prepared for the table from
cream, etc., or so as to resemble cream.
4. A cosmetic; a creamlike medicinal preparation.
In vain she tries her paste and creams, To smooth
her skin or hide its seams. --Goldsmith.
5. The best or choicest part of a thing; the quintessence;
as, the cream of a jest or story; the cream of a
collection of books or pictures.
Welcome, O flower and cream of knights errant.
--Shelton.
{Bavarian cream}, a preparation of gelatin, cream, sugar, and
eggs, whipped; -- to be eaten cold.
{Cold cream}, an ointment made of white wax, almond oil, rose
water, and borax, and used as a salve for the hands and
lips.
{Cream cheese}, a kind of cheese made from curd from which
the cream has not been taken off, or to which cream has
been added.
{Cream gauge}, an instrument to test milk, being usually a
graduated glass tube in which the milk is placed for the
cream to rise.
{Cream of lime}.
(a) A scum of calcium carbonate which forms on a solution
of milk of lime from the carbon dioxide of the air.
(b) A thick creamy emulsion of lime in water.
{Cream of tartar} (Chem.), purified tartar or argol; so
called because of the crust of crystals which forms on the
surface of the liquor in the process of purification by
recrystallization. It is a white crystalline substance,
with a gritty acid taste, and is used very largely as an
ingredient of baking powders; -- called also {potassium
bitartrate}, {acid potassium tartrate}, etc.