🧈 Cream and butter
Products from the fatty part of milk: cream, butter and ghee.
Cream is the fatty part of milk, separated by settling or by centrifuge. The Codex standard defines it as a liquid dairy product relatively rich in fat, in the form of an emulsion of fat in skimmed milk. Cream comes as pouring cream, whipping cream, whipped cream and cultured cream — the last is how sour cream and crème fraîche are made.
Butter is made by churning cream: the “fat-in-water” emulsion inverts, the fat globules clump into butter, and the remaining liquid is called buttermilk. According to the FAO, butter contains about 81% fat. Clarified butter and ghee are butter with the water evaporated off: ghee is about 99.5% fat and, with very low moisture, can keep for 6–8 months or longer, according to the FAO.
According to the FAO, ghee has been made in India since about 1500 BC, and today India accounts for about 40% of the world’s butter and ghee. In the Middle East a similar product made from goat, sheep or camel milk is called samn. In Central and Northern Europe, where the climate is cooler, fresh butter has historically been more common.
What it includes
How it connects to milk
🧈 Cream and butter ← kind of ← 🥛 Cream → made from → 🥛 Milk
Links
- Part of
- 🧀 Dairy products
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between clarified butter and ghee?
Both are made by removing water and milk solids from butter; ghee is usually heated until it has a light caramel aroma. There is no fundamental difference in composition: both are almost pure milk fat.
How much fat is in butter?
About 80–82%; the rest is water plus small amounts of protein and lactose.
Similar
♻️ Dairy by-products · 🍦 Dairy desserts · 🥫 Preserved milk products · 🥣 Fermented milk products