SOME FACTORS AFFECTING THE PROPERTIES OF 

 WHIPPING CREAM AND THE QUALITY OF THE FINISHED 



PRODUCT 



By W. S. Mueller, Assistant Research Professor, M. J. Mack, Assistant 

 Professor, and H. G. Lindquist, Assistant Professor, of Dairy 



Industry 



INTRODUCTION 



One of the problems of considerable importance to the dairyman is that of 

 the whipping properties of cream. The housewife is prone to judge the products 

 of a dairy by the whipping ability of cream obtained from that dairy. Whipping 

 cream is a unique dairy product in that it is sold as a partly finished product; 

 and inasmuch as some customers do not know how to whip cream properly, it 

 thereby becomes a special problem to the dairyman. 



Many milk dealers have tried to educate the consumer to the proper care of 

 cream which is to be whipped. Other agencies have also helped by publishing 

 circulars and leaflets on the subject of whipping cream. An example of this 

 type of publication is circular No. 115 of the New York State Agricultural 

 Experiment Station entitled, "How to Whip Cream." 



Inability to whip cream satisfactorily may be the fault of the housewife. 

 First of all, cream must be cold. From 40 to 45° F. is ideal, although cream 

 can be whipped at temperatures between 45 and 55° F. All utensils must be 

 cold so as not to warm the cream during the whipping process. A turbine type 

 of whipper is satisfactory. The bowl should not be over-full. A cream testing 

 between 30 and 35 percent fat, which has been held for at least four hours at 

 the whipping temperature, should be used. If these requirements are met by 

 the housewife, the cream should whip satisfactorily. If it does not, then there 

 is reason to suspect the milk dealer who sold the cream. 



The references in the literature pertaining to the question of whipping cream 

 are too numerous to review thoroughly in this publication. The major factors 

 affecting the whipping properties of cream have been studied frequently and, 

 as a result, the majority of milk dealers are familiar with the principal factors 

 involved. They know in general the effect of temperature changes, composition, 

 and age, and how each step in the processing of cream affects whipping ability. 

 However, some recent recommendations for increasing cream viscosity (1) may 

 have an effect on the whipping properties of the cream so treated. The whip- 

 ping ability of cream which had been cooled slowly so as to increase the viscosity 

 was studied in this experiment. 



Although a considerable amount of research has been published on cream 

 whipping, virtually all the work is open to the criticism that hand-operated 

 whippers were used. With a manually operated whipper a constant speed can- 

 not be maintained from one trial to another; it is also impossible to stop all 

 trials when the whipped creams are of the desired stiffness. Since both the 

 percentage of overrun and the amount of serum drainage from whipped cream 

 are affected somewhat by the stiffness of the whip, one can readily see that 

 accurate comparisons cannot be made with manually operated whippers. The 

 authors are aware of only the investigations of Templeton and Sommer (2) 

 and Mueller (3) in which whippers of constant speed were employed. 



