Defination,Compostion,Standards and Processing of Cream

The fat contents play an important role in pricing of milk. Cream is the fat rich portion of milk, it is extracted from milk as part of milk processing. At household level it is obtained as Malai from boiled and cooled milk. In the market, the cream is available with varying fat levels - low fat, medium fat, and high fat. Different types of cream are required for different purposes. All the commercial available cream is obtained by mechanical separation. Cream is used for making ice cream,butter, ghee and butter oil in the commercial dairy plant. Some portion of cream is utilized for dressing the product in bakery and coffee making. Cream is one of the important dairy products. If milk is allowed to stand undisturbed, the portion that rises naturally to the surface and forms a layer is known as cream. It is obtained by separation of milk before mixing or homogenization. Separation produces two Cream fractions. The fraction, which contains fat in highly concentrated form, is called cream. Another fraction, which is a non-fat fraction, is termed as skim milk. Cream is rich in butterfat. It also contains other constituents of milk but in lower proportion than milk. Milk can be separated either by gravity separation method or by mechanical separation method. In the dairy industry, cream is separated by mechanical method employing centrifugal cream separator.