"Gourmet" cream

[MelissaH]

We got home from our holiday travels last night and headed out to get some cheap pizza for dinner and some milk for breakfast. And lo and behold, at our local dairy, we found something new: a quart container of so-called gourmet heavy cream, with 40% butterfat! (For comparison purposes, the "regular" heavy cream is 36%.) The regular stuff is available in both ultra-pasteurized and non-ultra versions, but the gourmet variety only comes UP. I guess you can't have everything, and I suspect they might not sell enough gourmet cream to make it worth their while for regular-shelf-life pasteurization.

So, now that I have a quart of 40% butterfat cream, what do I do with it? I also have four Meyer lemons on hand, but the two don't necessarily need to be connected. I do have an ice cream maker!

MelissaH

[Chris Hennes]

Why on Earth do they ultra-pasteurize the "gourmet" product? That doesn't make sense to me... I would have expected the opposite.

[joancassell]

In Saint Louis, we can get a local (Pevely) 40% cream that is just pasteurized. Another local dairy (Oberweis) makes a 40% cream that I think even better, it comes in a 12 ounce glass (yes, old-fashioned glass!) bottle and I sometimes go out of my way to find it, and also to buy their superlative sour cream, which is definitely better than the usual supermarket stuff. I'm not a big milk drinker or I would surely drink their milk which also comes in glass bottles. (There's also a farmer who sells chickens and eggs at the summer Farmer's Market; he used to sell raw milk (divine-tasting!), but someone complained and now you've got to contact him and arrange for individual delivery, since the raw milk seems to break some law or other. (Probably the law against great-taste, contributing to the homegenization of American taste buds!)

[paulraphael]

Why on Earth do they ultra-pasteurize the "gourmet" product? That doesn't make sense to me... I would have expected the opposite.

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Yeah, right? I can't understand why it's so hard to find un-ultra pasteurized cream.

[divalasvegas]

We got home from our holiday travels last night and headed out to get some cheap pizza for dinner and some milk for breakfast. And lo and behold, at our local dairy, we found something new: a quart container of so-called gourmet heavy cream, with 40% butterfat! (For comparison purposes, the "regular" heavy cream is 36%.) The regular stuff is available in both ultra-pasteurized and non-ultra versions, but the gourmet variety only comes UP. I guess you can't have everything, and I suspect they might not sell enough gourmet cream to make it worth their while for regular-shelf-life pasteurization.

So, now that I have a quart of 40% butterfat cream, what do I do with it? I also have four Meyer lemons on hand, but the two don't necessarily need to be connected. I do have an ice cream maker!

MelissaH

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Lemon Chiffon ice cream perhaps? I used to love this as a kid; it was a commercial brand made by a local ice cream place/convenience store called High's (long gone). It was very creamy and lightly lemony. The recipe on this person's food blog HERE seems straightforward enough and utilizes both cream and lemons (scoll down about halfway). I don't think adding a little lemon zest would hurt either.

[Chris Hennes]

Yeah, right? I can't understand why it's so hard to find un-ultra pasteurized cream.

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I can get it in the 36% fat content variety at the local Wegmans, but I have no access (that I know of) to 40% butterfat. As for what to make with it... you want something where the ultrapasteurization and subsequent denaturing of proteins doesn't matter, and the fat content will be helpful. I don't know much about ice cream, but it seems like it might be a good option.

[pax]

My husband insists that there is something that happens in the ultra-pasteurization that makes him itch when he drinks it, so I know where to buy the u-u-p stuff in every town around.

Such a pain, it is. And I have no idea whether it might be true, or not, because he is such a Professor Flubber, I can't get him to keep a food diary. "Yes, lunch." Long silence. "I think I ate lunch, yes... mmhhhmm....lunch." And then he wanders away again.

We are moving to NH soon and he wants to add a small Jersey cow to the livestock we already have. He is in for a shock. I don't do cow.

[andiesenji]

The ultra-pasteurization process renders the cream resistant to curd formation so it can't be used to make clotted cream and if you try to make butter from it, it becomes grainy.

However, you can add calcium chloride to it, which counteracts the effects of the U-P process.

If I can't get the "normal" type cream and I want to make a batch of full cream mozarella, I add a drop of calcium chloride liquid per cup of cream. (I get it from a cheesemaking supply vendor.)

I learned to milk cows and goats as soon as my hands were big enough..... Growing up on a farm is a great education.

Edited December 28, 2007 by andiesenji (log)

[chefpeon]

The ultra-pasteurization process renders the cream resistant to curd formation so it can't be used to make clotted cream and if you try to make butter from it, it becomes grainy.

Which explains why I can put the ultra-pasteurized cream on my mixer and walk away for a while and I STILL can't overwhip it. It's like they've made the cream idiot-proof for me. Yes. Guess how many times I've accidentally made butter, due to my short attention span and regular cream.

he used to sell raw milk (divine-tasting!), but someone complained and now you've got to contact him and arrange for individual delivery, since the raw milk seems to break some law or other. (Probably the law against great-taste, contributing to the homegenization of American taste buds!)

There was a case in Southern Washington a few months ago where some kids got pretty sick from drinking raw milk that a dairy was not licensed to distribute. Taste or not, let's keep it safe. If adults want to take risks that's their choice, but keep the kids on the pasteurized.

[KKLL00b]

Flo Braker offered a technique where you melt some butter with some heavy cream, then fold it back into the rest of you heavy cream which results in up to 50% butterfat.

I'll have to dig into her book to get the exact measurements. I think it was in "The Simple Art of Perfect Baking".

[andiesenji]

Flo Braker offered a technique where you melt some butter with some heavy cream, then fold it back into the rest of you heavy cream which results in up to 50% butterfat.

I'll have to dig into her book to get the exact measurements.  I think it was in "The Simple Art of Perfect Baking".

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I have a "cream-maker" a device, made in England in the '50s, which mixes butter with milk to make cream.

Several manufacturers produced these in the mid-century era. Friends who lived in certain areas of England during the post-war period have told me that all the milk they got was essentially skim milk. For those who had lived in rural areas, they referred to it as "blue" milk.

[dougal]

... Friends who lived in certain areas of England during the post-war period have told me that all the milk they got was essentially skim milk.  For those who had lived in rural areas, they referred to it as "blue" milk. 

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The colours merely refer to the colour of the bottle cap - standardised nationwide.

Blue was for skimmed milk - which was actually fairly rare in my childhood memory.

Red top was the regular, and being pre-homogenisation, still had a distinct cream layer at the top of the bottle.

Silver and Gold tops were "expensive", with lots of cream.

When homogenisation was eventually introduced, it was signified by the colour being printed in stripes over the silver aluminium foil background.

Certainly fresh (non-uht) "Cream" as a product in itself was much rarer (and more expensive - in proportion) than today. And in the 60's when my father bought a Kenwood Chef, he got the cream-maker attachment - but preferred the (by-then) readily available 'proper' cream!

BTW, unpasteurised milk was sold with green tops.

And the colours for today's plastic bottles with plastic tops are all different ...

Edited December 28, 2007 by dougal (log)

[MelissaH]

The colours merely refer to the colour of the bottle cap - standardised nationwide.

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Lucky you, with some semblance of standardization by color.

Our supermarket tends to group the milk cartons by color. All the red ones go together, the greens together, etc. The problem is that some brands use green for 2%, while other brands use green for skim! I always take the time to look carefully.

All the UP creams from the dairy are different shades of blue. The non-UP creams are shades of yellow or tan.

MelissaH

[dougal]

I wonder if someone could explain what constitutes "butterfat"?

Is it total fat content?

Or just the saturated fats? Or saturated + mono-unsaturated? Or... what?

My (Waitrose - UK Supermarket) tub of "Double Cream" has (per 100ml) 47.5g total fats including 29.7g saturated fats...

How does that compare with 36% or 40% "butterfat"?

And the "Extra Thick Double Cream" was 50.5g total fat (31.4g saturates, 13.0 mono- and 1.8g poly-unsaturates) -- but that is labelled "not suitable for whipping"...