miscellaneous query

[calimac]

Why do recipes that call for 2 cups of milk and 2 cups of cream not just ask for a quart of half-and-half instead?

Comments

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Well, if I hadn't been attentive in the supermarket the other day I'd have come home with a pint of fat-free "half and half".

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

There is fat-free milk, too, and 1% and 2%, and I have to be careful to attend to which one B. has sent me out to buy. (I do the cooking, but she drinks all the milk.)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I can't answer your question, but I'm very grateful to you for letting me know that a cup is half a pint. I've often been flummoxed by that term while reading American recipes (without of course having the gumption to look it up).

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The only time I've tried to cook outside the US was during my brief residency of a rooftop apartment in Rome, where I discovered that all the package instructions were in mL, about which I sometimes had to guess. They were also, of course, in Italian, about which I also sometimes had to guess.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

I think it would depend on the recipe and whether the milk and cream go in at different points of the process to achieve some differing kind of result. Though it might just be a conversion of a recipe from some culture, like my own, which knows not the half-and-half.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

It would, but it doesn't. They go in together.

I am informed that in the UK you can find what's called "half cream." That's what I'm talking about: half [cream] (and half [milk]).

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Usually called single cream and double cream, the latter being the thicker, heavier product.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

The answer is that the butterfat content of half-and-half is way lower than the butterfat content of whole milk + cream, and the butterfat content in a recipe will affect the taste, mouthfeel, how it bakes (if baked goods), etc.

US butterfat content:

Whole milk - 3.5%
Heavy cream - 40%
Commercial half & half - 10% to 18%

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Then half and half is mislabeled, isn't it? Good thing I didn't take that shortcut.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

Donna tells me that light cream + whole milk = butterfat content of half & half, so....it depends.

In some recipes you could take the shortcut and it would work - in a cream soup, for example. In baked goods, it might not.