Half and Half, Whipping Cream, and Heavy Whipping Cream

[BakerAunt]

I have three new scone recipes from old issues of Bon Appetit set aside to try. All three call for whipping cream. I went to the local store, and it had half and half, as well as heavy whipping cream, but no regular whipping cream. I then recalled that I had this problem in the past with this store. I can put the recipes on hold until we run our errands in another town later this week, but I wondered how much difference it would make to use the heavy cream. At least one of the recipes call for beating the cream until stiff peaks form, then adding it to the dry ingredients.

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[aaronatthedoublef]

Hi BA. Just looking at the sides of the cartons heavy whipping cream appears to have more fat. I found this article online. You can search and see. According to this whipping cream is 30-36% while heavy cream is higher - the article says one dairy came in am 39%.

They say more fat makes it more stable.

I've always used heavy cream regardless of whether the recipe called for whipping cream or heavy cream or, sometime, water in my pie crust.

[Mike Nolan]

Most stores in the USA seem to carry 3 types of cream these days:

Half and Half - usually 12-18% butterfat.

Table Cream - Can range from 20-30% butterfat. I've got a lot of candy recipes that call for 22% cream.

Heavy Cream - Generally 30% or more butterfat, around here it's usually 38%

As I recall, it takes about 30% butterfat in order to make whipped cream, so table cream generally won't whip into whipped cream. (McGee confirms the 30% figure.)

Corrected: According to McGee it takes about 25% butterfat in order for it to be stable, ie, adding cream to a hot sauce or soup without it curdling, so most brands of half and half are likely to break if used in a sauce.

In England you can sometimes buy double cream, which is somewhere around 55-60% butterfat. I've never seen it in the USA, not even through restaurant suppliers.

When I was growing up, our milk wasn't always homogenized, so occasionally there'd be a layer of cream at the top. That was pretty rich cream.

In most parts of the country, you can't buy raw milk in stores, though I've been told that in Nebraska if you go straight to the farm they can sell it to you, though the two dairy farms I've asked about it won't do it. I can get raw goats milk from a local goat farmer/cheesemaker that way, but have never done it.

[BakerAunt]

Aaron--for some reason, your link for the cream article goes to the last entry of "What are You Baking the Week of June 30?"

From the discussion, I now know to make sure any cream I hope to whip is at least 30% butterfat. I may go ahead and buy the heavy cream. If not, I will check the side of any whipping cream I might buy.

[Mike Nolan]

The Wikipedia article on whipped cream says it takes 35% butterfat for cream to be whippable, but Harold McGee says 30%. The higher the butterfat content, the easier it will whip. Heavy cream is one of those things where I read the label carefully in the store, not all brands have the same butterfat content.

Having the cream and utensils very cold helps, some sources suggest putting the mixing bowl in the freezer for a half hour.

McGee also notes that 'natural' cream, that which rises to the top of whole milk, is only about 20% butterfat, the invention of centrifugal separators made it much easier for dairies to produce heavy cream.

[Italiancook]

Once, I found heavy cream labeled on the front as 60-something percent heavy cream. Out of curiosity, I bought it. I thought it was too thick for using in a soup, but guessed it'd be fantastic as whipping cream. It was so thick I thought it'd be too unhealthy to use with fruit. Never again saw it in the store, which was okay. I wasn't impressed with it.

[Mike Nolan]

I wonder if what you saw was Devonshire clotted cream?

[Italiancook]

I don't think it was clotted cream. Once, I ordered that from igourmet.com. As I recall, it was not pourable. The high percentage heavy cream from the grocery would pour even though it was quite thick.

BTW, what does one do with clotted cream? I ordered it without knowing anything about it. When it arrived, I couldn't figure out what to do with it! I guessed one would put it on scones, but I don't like scones.

[Mike Nolan]

I've only had it on scones and similar products, it's so expensive we don't buy it often.

My wife's scones recipe is sweeter than most, almost like a shortbread, except that it rises a lot. (Sorry, I can't post the recipe, she got it from a caterer years ago on the condition that she not give it to anyone else.)

[aaronatthedoublef]

Clotted cream is good on scones and berries. For example, when they mention strawberries and cream at Wimbledon it's clotted cream.

The web says: Clotted cream (sometimes called scalded, clouted, Devonshire or Cornish cream) is a thick cream made by indirectly heating full-cream cow's milk using steam or a water bath and then leaving it in shallow pans to cool slowly.

Sorry about the bad link. I'll try to fix it.

[BakerAunt]

I bought heavy whipping cream at the store. However, nowhere on the carton does it say what the butterfat content is. Maybe it is the same as the fat content?

• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by BakerAunt.

[Italiancook]

Thanks, Aaron, for the information.

[Mike Nolan]

Butterfat is the fat in the milk, so the nutrition label should have that information.

However, I generally won't buy a brand of cream if the carton doesn't explicitly list the buttefat content without having to search for it. That's just bad marketing on the part of the dairy.

[BakerAunt]

I only had the choice of two brands (ah, welcome to life in a small town with one grocery store), and neither stated butterfat amounts. The other numbers were the same. It says 5 grams of fat per Tablespoon or 5% of daily fat allowance. I bought Deans--which has the "dairy pure" on its label, which means they don't use hormones, and thus have to include an asterisk that there are no studies linking hormones given to cows with any health issues. I might look at the Dean's website.

https://www.dairypure.com/products/creamers/heavy-whipping

Hmm. It seems that they sell heavy cream and heavy whipping cream, and I bought the latter after seeing "heavy." That will teach me to read the entire label. However, the fat content was identical to the other brand available, as were the numbers.

I decided to submit a question. I'll report back on the answer I receive.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by BakerAunt.

[Mike Nolan]

There's something messed up about the product label in the link you provided. It says 'serving size 1 cup 240 ml' and says there are 16 servings per container. I really doubt that there are 16 CUPS in the package, that'd be a gallon container! Does the nutrition label on the package you bought say the same thing?

I can't compute the percentage of butterfat from the nutrition label because mL is a volume measurement, not a weight measurement, but if it is 5 grams of fat per tablespoon, the roundoff error (5 grams means somewhere between 4.50 and 5.49 grams per tablespoon) is so large that the calculation would probably be meaningless anyway. (That's one of the reasons I truly hate the mandated 'nutrition information' labels!)

If it says it is whipping cream, it has to be at least 30% butterfat to whip, so it's probably in the 35-39% range. I also found a contact page for Land O'Lakes, I'll let everyone know if I get a response to my inquiry. (In the interests of full disclosure I identified myself as a food blogger and mentioned that I intended to publish their response.)

Here's what another writer came up with: butterfat content of cream I doubt it is exactly 42% butterfat as computed on that site, but that's within the roundoff error range.

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