Q. I live in a country where it is difficult to find all the ingredients for recipes. What is the difference between the following and can any of them replace another: creme fraiche, fromage frais, fromage blanc, yogurt, sour cream, cream, double cream, whipping cream?
A. The dairy products you mention fall into perhaps three categories: creams and soured creams, yogurt, and fresh cheeses.
We assume you're not asking what cream is, but what a recipe writer means when his recipe simply calls for cream. In general, it means a fairly thick, relatively high-butterfat cream. Double cream is the British designation for super-rich cream - with 48% butterfat. By contrast, whipping cream in the United States has between 30% and 40% butterfat. Light creams, or single cream in Britain, which average around 20% butterfat, are not as stable for cooking, are more prone to curdling in the presence of acids or high heat, and so are not called for as often in recipes.
Creme fraiche and sour cream are both manufactured cream products. Creme fraiche is a slightly tangy, slightly nutty, thickened cream. Before the age of pasteurization creme fraiche made itself as the bacteria present in the cream fermented and thickened it naturally. It is widely available in Europe, but much less so in the US, where all cream is pasteurized, and therefore has to be fermented artificially.
Sour cream was also traditionally made by letting fresh cream sour naturally - the acids and bacteria present produced a generally consistent flavor and thick texture that went well with both sweet and savory dishes. These days, commercially produced sour cream is made by inoculating pasteurized light cream with bacteria cultures, letting the bacteria grow until the cream is both soured and thick, and then re-pasteurizing it to stop the process.
Sour cream cannot be made at home with pasteurized cream; the lack of bacteria in the cream will cause the cream to spoil instead of sour. If you have access to un-pasteurized heavy cream, you can add 1 tablespoon of vinegar to 2 cups of cream and let the mixture stand out at room temperature for several hours until curdled.
You can also make a facsimile of creme fraiche by adding a tablespoon of buttermilk (don't tell us they don't have buttermilk where you live!) or a half cup of sour cream to a cup of whipping cream, heating it gently to 110 F
(45 C), then putting it in a loosely covered bottle in a warm place and letting it sit for anywhere from 8 hours to a couple of days, until thick. Store it in the refrigerator, where it will thicken further, and keep for about three weeks.
Creme fraiche and sour cream can be used interchangeably in most recipes, but creme fraiche has two advantages over sour cream: it can be whipped like whipping cream, and it will not curdle if boiled.
Yogurt is a milk product that has been fermented and allowed to coagulate. Of all the foods you mention, it is probably the most universally available, having developed first in Asia before spreading to most of the rest of the world. In various cultures, yogurt may be made from the milk of cows, sheep, goats, camels, water buffaloes, and yaks. The plain yogurt found in the US and Britain is mostly made from cow's and is fairly bland. A yak's-milk yogurt used in an American or British recipe would probably be a bit strong. Sour cream can also stand in for yogurt in many recipes, and vice versa.
Fromage frais simply means fresh cheese in French, and at its most generic, can refer to any of hundreds of varieties of cheese that have not been ripened, but are meant to be eaten shortly after they're made. These include American cottage cheese, German quark, Italian ricotta and mozzarella, the French fromage blanc, Spanish queso fresco, and on and on. In practice, when a recipe calls for formage frais, it probably means fromage blanc, which is a creamy soft cheese made with whole or skimmed milk and cream. It has the consistency of another product available in the US, cream cheese, but with fewer calories and less cholesterol. Where available, low-fat cream cheese is an acceptable substitute for fromage blanc. You may have to do a little exploring in your country to find a mild, soft, white, fresh cheese that you can use for cooking.
Oh, and that buttermilk? It used to be the liquid left over when cream was churned to butter. Nowadays, it's another commercially made product, in which bacteria is introduced to lowfat milk, causing it to thicken and producing a tangy flavor.
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