• Fat-free or nonfat milk: Still informally called “skim milk” by some, though the term has disappeared from most labels. It contains the whey and casein of milk with none of the butterfat, and is fortified with vitamins A and D. Proportionally it contains more lactose than any other form of fresh milk. (The proportion of lactose decreases with every increase in milkfat content, so that heavy cream contains only minute amounts.) It also curdles more easily with the heat of cooking. When it comes from well-managed herds of cows producing a lot of protein in the milk, it can be quite satisfying. The fat-free milk from large commercial dairies, however, is at best indifferent-tasting. There are versions with added nonfat dry milk solids, which in my opinion just plaster an extraneous cheesiness over dull-tasting milk. Note that they have more lactose than plain skim milk.
All other gradations manufactured by large commercial processors are based on fat-free milk homogenized with certain standardized percentages of milkfat.
• Low-fat milk: Made by homogenizing fat-free milk and cream to 0.5 percent milkfat content. Fortified with vitamins A and D.
• Reduced-fat milk: Usually made by homogenizing fat-free milk and cream to 1 percent, 1.5 percent, or 2 percent milkfat content. Fortified with vitamins A and D.
• Whole milk: The designation “whole,” though legally sanctioned, is misleading inasmuch as the milk has been separated by centrifuge and recombined to an arbitrary standard. In most states, it means a mixture of nonfat milk and cream homogenized to 3.25 percent milkfat content. Fortified with vitamin D.
Cream, as processed for mass distribution, is also usually homogenized, but not as universally as milk. The unhomogenized kind, in all gradations, is much creamier-tasting. On standing for a while, it will develop a layer of skim milk at the bottom, clearly visible when the cream is sold in glass. This is not a defect but a sign that the cream retains milkfat globules large enough to separate from the thinner milk, not having been crushed to a fraction of their original size through homogenization.
For more about cream, see the essay on whipped cream. Today’s usual retail-store choices—nearly always ultrapasteurized—are:
• Half-and-half: A term with no uniform meaning. Long ago it hazily designated a mixture of half milk, half cream by volume. Modern manufacturing percentages (by weight) range from 10.5 to 18 percent milkfat in different states, or even in the same state as processed by different manufacturers. Note that percentages are only sometimes stated on labels. Nearly all half-and-half is homogenized. I hope it isn’t necessary to say that the product brazenly labeled “nonfat half-and-half” in supermarkets is utterly unrelated to the real stuff and should not be used in any of my recipes.
• Light cream: The least precise of all designations; ranges from 18 to 30 percent milkfat. Thus the terms “half-and-half” and “light cream” can overlap in meaning. If milkfat percentages don’t appear on labels, trial and error is the only way to tell how rich or light local brands of half-and-half or light cream are. Often homogenized.
• Heavy cream: Must contain at least 36 percent milkfat; anything richer is very rare. Often homogenized.
In most places today it is uncommon to find the intermediate gradation “light whipping cream” for cream with a milkfat percentage between 30 and 36. Where it exists, it is often homogenized.
As explained on this page, milk in many gradations is also sold with value-added features such as lactose reduction. In consequence, dairy-section shelves are filled with a huge number of products that, if you believe the marketing moguls, represent a wonderful diversity of choice inviting cooks to exploit innumerable subtle differences in the kitchen. In my opinion, they add up to the kind of niche-marketing-gone-hogwild spectacle that you see in the toothpaste aisle. I don’t suggest buying any kinds from supermarkets except whole milk and heavy cream (sometimes light cream or half-and-half). When unhomogenized, truly whole milk, good skim milk, and nonultrapasteurized cream are available to cooks everywhere without search missions to expensive specialty food shops, then we can start congratulating ourselves on choice. Meanwhile, cooking with milk and cream is best done with the plainest, least-fiddled-with versions you can find.
There is one notable category of exceptions to this rule: canned milk, a food intended for emergency situations that in some parts of the world ended by taking on gastronomic dimensions of its own. Gail Borden, who introduced a vacuum-evaporation method of condensing and canning heavily sweetened milk shortly before the Civil War, reaped a considerable wartime reward by supplying it on a large scale to the Union Army. A different process perfected in the late 1880s yielded unsweetened evaporated milk. The two new products had a lively success over the next century throughout the industrialized West, where they still command a following. But it was in the Latin American and Asian tropics—regions with brief dairying histories or none—that they would make their biggest mark.
Canned milk accompanied the colonial powers to much of southern Asia, where no society except India had any taste for milk as it came from cows or other milch animals. That it didn’t taste like other forms of milk was all to its advantage. The condensed kind, which Borden had intended to be diluted with up to five or, in a pinch, seven times its volume in water before being drunk like usual milk, had (when undiluted) a densely syrupy quality that people greatly enjoyed. Evaporated milk was less sweet and heavy, but also had a sufficiently strong caramelized note to drown out the disliked flavor of unprocessed milk.
AN EARLY CANNED MILK ADVERTISEMENT
In Central and South America, European-style dairy farming has been extensive enough to make fresh milk known wherever milch animals can be raised. But the love of canned milk seems to run deeper. Both there and in Asia, condensed and evaporated milk are primarily used not as major elements of the diet but as enrichers of sweetened beverages—for instance, Thai-style iced coffee and tea, or the Latin American equivalents of eggnog. In Latin America, they are also preferred for flans and used in desserts such as the celebrated “three milks,” or tres leches, a cake made with condensed milk, evaporated milk, and cream. It is important to realize that in these cases canned milk is not a poor relation of “real” milk but an ingredient prized for its own qualities.
Finally, there are two other forms in which unsoured milk reaches a large clientele: the long-keeping fluid version and the powdered kind.
LONG-KEEPING MILK IN ASEPTIC PACKAGING has been advertised as a great convenience because it needs no refrigeration until opened, though afterward it is as perishable as any other kind. One brand, Parmalat, now seems to have become a permanent fixture in U.S. supermarkets. When I’ve tried it, the flavor has seemed at least as fresh as that of conventionally packaged milk at the end of the usual journeys to supermarket and home refrigerator. I don’t buy it myself, but this is one case where aseptic technology seems to produce something no worse than the prevailing conventional technology—though that isn’t saying much. Every dish in this chapter (except for those using canned milk) will taste better if made with very fresh unhomogenized milk or cream. But many of them can be reasonably managed with mass-produced whole milk, including the long-keeping versions. (I don’t recommend any of the reduced-fat gradations.)
DRIED OR POWDERED MILK has been around longer than the aseptic-packaged fluid version, and strikes me as the least desirable way you can buy unsoured milk. But it is important enough to many people to deserve some attention. Its history is bound up with the chronic surpluses confronting milk producers. Surpluses of something notoriously perishable are harder to deal with than surpluses of, let’s say, salt.
From the late nineteenth century on, manufacturers were looking into the possibility of converting unsoured milk into a form still more durable than canned milk, and cheaper to handle and package in large volumes. Early versions had a sweetish, cooked flavor, slightly mitigated as the technology improved. The Great Depression and World War II brought about large-scale diversion of milk surpluses, in dried form, to domestic foo
d-assistance programs and international relief agencies. These still are financial mainstays of the industry. Huge amounts also find their way into commercial confectionery, baked goods, canned soups, frozen foods, and many more uses. As pointed out earlier, nowadays dried milk solids are often used to “enrich” commercial skim milk, though I find no real richness in the result. But for decades, a stubborn drawback discouraged retail sales of dried milk: the difficulty of dissolving the powder quickly and smoothly in cold water. The problem was solved in the mid-1950s by a new technique of getting the powdered grains to aggregate in minute crystals. Millions of consumers took to instant dried milk as a thrifty alternative to fresh milk. For a while it was the darling of nutrition-minded recipe developers, who encouraged home cooks to put supposedly vitalizing doses of dried milk into sauces, puddings, and breads.
Another technical problem was more intractable: the tendency of milkfat to develop spoiled or harsh flavors in the drying process. Dairy processors did find solutions, but they were expensive enough to make mass-produced whole dried milk economically infeasible. This is why virtually all commercial brands are nonfat, though there is some distribution of whole dried milk in health-food stores.
As the shelf life of fluid milk in cartons has been extended, dried milk reconstituted at home has lost some of its appeal for consumers. Its great selling points are cheapness, durability, and—for people in remote locales with little access to other dairy products—convenience. In my view dried milk is the least appetizing form of either skim or whole milk. I don’t cook with it myself, and would not recommend using it in any of my recipes. The only form of dried milk I ever use is malted-milk powder, which isn’t meant to produce an imitation of fresh milk, and whose caramelized flavors are part of its appeal. (See Chocolate Malted.)
CREAM, WHIPPED AND UNWHIPPED: SOME THOUGHTS
It isn’t exactly news that most people today cannot find plain pasteurized (much less raw) cream. In fact, some users of this book probably have never encountered any that wasn’t ultrapasteurized. To them, anything else may not taste quite normal. But if you can possibly get hold of some basic pasteurized heavy cream (preferably unhomogenized) to compare with the more usual kind, you’ll be better able to understand why it’s the ultrapasteurized version that’s really not normal.
The main difference is that the heat of ultrapasteurization (carried out in a rapid, high-pressure continuous feed at 280°F) affects particular kinds of whey proteins called agglutinins that otherwise would bond with the membranes of milkfat globules in well-chilled milk or cream and encourage separate droplets of fat to cluster closely together. Through this clustering action the milkfat “creams,” or rises to the top as a visible cream layer.
When skimmed or removed by centrifuge, this risen, or agglutinated, cream has a satisfyingly slow-flowing quality that we think of as “heavy,” though as regards specific gravity it’s really less heavy than the rest of the milk. Heat tends to damage the agglutinins; the effect is negligible with old-fashioned, low-temperature batch-pasteurization methods but quite destructive at the higher temperature required for ultrapasteurization. As a result, ultrapasteurized cream is thinner than cream pasteurized by slower methods.
If you’ve been able to line up a pasteurized and an ultrapasteurized sample of heavy cream and taste both, you may think I’ve got it dead wrong, because the ultrapasteurized cream will seem quite viscous and heavy. You will find the reason in the ingredients list printed on both cartons. Plain pasteurized cream will list nothing but “cream” (or perhaps “milk”). The ultrapasteurized label is more romantic reading, with enticements like “carrageenan” or “guar gum,” “polysorbate 80,” and “mono- and diglycerides.” It is purely because of such fixes to the thinness problem that the contents seem heavier than nonultrapasteurized cream. If you put both on berries or other acid fruit, the ultrapasteurized sample will react by turning quite a bit thicker—also thanks to the same extraneous agents. And the finish of the plain pasteurized cream will be cleaner and fresher, without the cooked or overcooked note of the other.
The proof of the pudding is in the whipping. Since ultrapasteurized cream has been in existence, old-school cooks have been loudly complaining about how difficult that process has become. You will see why if you put two equal-sized samples (anything from ½ to 1 cup) of both kinds into separate bowls, chill them well in the refrigerator, and read on a bit.
Raw or plain pasteurized cream not only creams faster than its ultrapasteurized lookalike but also moves more easily to another useful step, a kind of bubble formation that depends on intact agglutinins helping clusters of milkfat globules come together. For best results the cream (preferably unhomogenized, for reasons to be explained) should contain at least 35 percent milkfat. If it is agitated through whipping with a set of wires or blades, air is introduced into the cream mass. (You have already seen the principle at work if you tried the brief “White Magic” Exercise 6.) The friction and commotion of whipping causes the complex, delicate milkfat-globule membranes to shed slippery bits of their own inner and outer walls. The agglutinins that they previously took up from the whey now help dislodged membrane-wall remnants to cooperatively join and to create new, differently constituted walls of film around the air pockets. At the same time, part of the fat starts to be released from some formerly unbreached globules.
With more agitation, eventually the still-chilled cream enters a delicate intermediate state: lightened and expanded to about twice its original volume from the incorporation of air in a film-supported network of bubbles, with the remaining milkfat starting to be jammed closer between bubbles but not yet cohering in a buttery mass. This is what we call “whipped cream.”
Check the time on the clock. Take the bowl of nonultrapasteurized cream and start whipping with any preferred beating tool. An immersion blender, wire whisk, rotary eggbeater, or hand mixer will do. So will a food processor, but it will be harder to follow the different stages by eye. Cream, container, and beating device should be very cold for the quickest and most thorough results—meaning the most efficient action of agglutinins on milkfat-globule membranes. The agglutinins bond most easily with membrane surfaces, thus encouraging the clustering of globules, at temperatures around 40°F. Their work is progressively impeded as the cream warms to anything like usual room temperatures.
As you beat and the cream moves from the globule-clustering stage to the partial rupture of globule membranes, you will see it looking loose and gloppy, a little heavier, noticeably expanded and thicker, and finally transformed into a light blossomy cloud. Do not let it turn to butter. People have preferences for more softly or stiffly whipped cream; I like it about as stiff as it can get but usually find myself in the minority on that question.
When it’s whipped to your satisfaction, look at the clock to see how long the whole process took. This will be highly variable, depending on several factors beyond your control. Put the lovely stuff back into the refrigerator and try to reproduce the experiment as exactly as possible with the ultrapasteurized heavy cream.
The cream will go through the same stages on the road to becoming whipped cream, but somewhat more slowly and (if you’re using a whisk or rotary eggbeater) more effortfully. The reason is that you have less in the way of membrane walls and agglutinins to start the clustering process and the buildup of film. The difference in time will be most marked if your non-ultrapasteurized sample was also unhomogenized; shattering milkfat globules to smithereens by forcing them through the minute nozzle openings of a homogenizer leaves crushed remnants too small to cluster easily and cream that takes longer to whip.
The more easily cream whips, the better-tasting the result. (The best comes from Jersey cows, whose milkfat occurs in large globules that give the cream a leg up on the clustering process.) Still, even ultrapasteurized and homogenized cream make infinitely better whipped cream than any of the pressurized prewhipped commercial substitutes. Even when they contain real cream, they have a vapid wishy-wa
shy consistency quite unlike the full-bodied quality of freshly whipped cream. It is true that home-whipped cream on standing displays a tendency to start leaking a bit of liquid, but this is not a serious drawback and can be partly offset if you beat in a small amount of sugar (a teaspoon to a cup of cream) partway through whipping and plan to very lightly rewhip it just before serving.
One cup of heavy cream will yield about 2 cups of whipped cream. There is no more agreeable dessert topping or pastry filling, whether the cream is plain or flavored with more sugar (2 to 3 tablespoons to each starting cup of cream), a jolt of any preferred spirit or liqueur, or a dash of vanilla or almond extract.
HISTORICAL UPS AND DOWNS
Given everything that I’ve said about the inferiority of ultrapasteurized cream, how did it come to crowd out old-fashioned pasteurized cream so decisively in the last thirty or forty years? The short answer is lack of public demand for cream, period. Cream has had its heydays and lean times in the history of Western cooking, and we seem to be well into one of the latter.
There are plenty of reasons that fresh cream hasn’t always been a prominent feature of every dairying region. It can exist, in theory, in any location with milch animals whose milk has large-enough fat globules to form a cream layer on standing. The best are cows and water buffaloes. But in hot climates the creaming phenomenon is somewhat diminished and the cream sours quickly. Thus the northerly milking regions of Europe were about the only areas where unsoured cream could have figured in cooking. Northeastern peoples, however, firmly gravitated toward sour cream. This was never a preference of the far northwestern reaches—but neither was fresh cream, for a long time. We have no evidence that most English or northern French cooks held any form of cream in high regard until close to the dawn of specialized modern dairying. It was after the late seventeenth century that cream-based dishes became common in English and French cookbooks, and that particular districts became known for the excellence of their cream as well as butter.
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