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By Ole Mouritsen and Klavs Styrbæk
Published 2017
Whipped cream is more complex than many other types of cream because it is actually a solidly packed network of air bubbles, held together by small spheres of fat that attach themselves to the surface of the air bubbles. Whipped cream can turn out to be just as stiff as a solid. As the fats are what hold the cream together, it is possible to make a stable foam only if the percentage of fat particles in the cream is sufficiently large, at least 30 percent and preferably greater. In addition, the larger fat particles in the cream must be broken up into pieces that are sufficiently small to be captured by the air bubbles. This process also releases the milk proteins from their original fat spheres, which makes them more unstable and increases their tendency to form larger fat particles. That is why the cream needs to be beaten, in fact, whipped to the stage where the fat particles are so small that they do not run together again before the stiff network of air bubbles is in place. This is also why temperature is important—when the cream is cold, it is much harder for the fat particles to coalesce. Whipped cream can also be made with the help of a siphon bottle using nitrous oxide (N2O). In the siphon, the gas is dissolved in the fat spheres of the cream, and when the pressure falls, a creamy foam with a very large number of air bubbles is formed.
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