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Oil in milk? new to me...

post #1 of 4
12/19/11 at 11:14pm
Thread Starter 

I just started experimenting with making caramel. I grabbed a few recipes from online to get the basic ingreds and formulas and set off on the super-basic beginner stuff. I reduced 1 cup heavy cream for a while, then added 1/3 cup of sugar and kept cooking, removing some for tasting as I went. After it really started getting dark (more dark than edible it seemed, but worthy of experimentation) I noticed that an oily substance started forming in the pan! Even more so after it cooled a bit.

 

now, I'm a bit of a culinary alchemist and love to delve into the mixing of tastes and textures, adding odd ingredients, etc and really want to understand the nature and energy of foods... so on to my question: apparently there is oil in milk? I didn't know this until tonight.

 

Can anyone explain the details of the oil in the milk? is it broken down fat? how is it used, how would you use this to make caramel better? Does milk/cream ruin at a certain temperature, etc. ANY information on this is appreciated. If you think it's too sciency or too much Chemistry please go on ahead with it! I'm all ears!

 

btw, this is my first post ever on cheftalk! Happy to be here; I'll do an intro soon :)

 

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post #2 of 4
12/20/11 at 1:20am
Thread Starter 

found out that milk fat/solids brown and burn at around 250 F.

 

Also that if you beat the heavy cream too vigourously the lipids will rupture creating butter milk and can change the flavor quite a bit.

 

also found this awesome website called The Science of Candy...

 

http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/candy/recipe-caramels.html#

 

so.... ya

 


Edited by IronicChef - 12/20/11 at 1:35am
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post #3 of 4
12/20/11 at 4:31am

Sugar is really not soluble in fat.

    Yes milk contains traces of fat, but not in 100% skimmed milk

Read the containers there is 1%  and 2% so you can see the fat in regular homo milk is not that much, but it is there along with lactose.

      Boiled and with addition of sugar you have now raised the boiling point so yes it will throw its fat content as will creams at that high a temp.  Try using skim milk in your preperations.. I commend you on your experimenting. Try reading some of Harold McGee s books on food and its chemistry and why s?

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post #4 of 4
12/20/11 at 6:55am

As we know, milk is not well bonded. The cream separates out if not homogenized  and so on. This is primarily because milk is a colloid, a suspension of stuff in water rather than a liquid compound all its own. So it's easy to curdle as well. It's very similar to if not itself an emulsion, though definitions vary somewhat.

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