How are butter, cream and cheese different ?

Butter, cream and cheese , they are so common and popular in our kitchen and on our dining table. But do you know the difference between the cream, cheese and butter?

About the main key component milk,normally speaking, milk contains 87% water, 4% fat, 3% protein, 5% lactose and 1% mineral. After water, fat or protein in milk is separated and concentrated, the milk can be processed to butter, cream or cheese. They are all milk products but they are different in many aspects, particularly different in their compositions. The main component of butter and cream is only fat, differing in that butter contains more fat. On the other hand, cheese has two major components, i.e., fat and protein.

Butter is water-in-oil emulsion. It contains 80-81% fat and 16-17% water. The rest of 1 per cent belongs to carbohydrate and protein. The salted butter contains a certain amount of salt. However, fat still takes up an overwhelming proportion.

Cream has the same compositions with butter. However, fat only occupies no more than 50% in cream, which make cream oil-in-water emulsion. Cream can be subdivided to many different types depending on its fat proportion. For example, the following are the popular cream types in USA and how much fat they contain:

1) Half-and-half: 12% fat;

2) Light cream: 20% fat;

3) Light whipping cream: 30% fat;

4) Whipping cream: 35% fat; and

5) Heavy cream and heavy whipping cream: 38% fat.

The first two types of cream, namely half-and-half cream and light cream, can also be called coffee cream or table cream because they often serve with coffee, with cereal for breakfast or with fruits and be the raw material of ice cream and baked dessert. For another thing, the whipping cream, light or heavy whipping cream are especially suitable to be used to decorate cakes with cream flowers. Sour cream is not mentioned above, but it is popular among European and north American countries. It is the product of cream fermentation by lactobacillus. It is accessed like salad dressing. People always have their baked potatoes, potato chips, vegetables and more mopping up the sour cream. Besides, the sour cream can be used to bake cakes and cookies.

Lastly, cheese mainly contains 30% water, 35% fat and 32% protein. 

Despite the differences of compositions, these three kinds of milk products are closely related with each other from the perspective of production. For example, whey cream butter is produced by mixing sweet cream with whey which is the by-product of cheese and contains little fat. Sweet cream butter is another type. It can be salted or salt-free.

We can also learn more about their relations through the following production chart.

Figure 1

Figure 2

It can be known from the figure 1 that cream is actually the starting point of butter production. In the figure 2, when the black represents water and white ball represents fat grain, we can find that there is a change from oil-in-water to water-in-oil in the production process from cream to butter.

How to pack cream, cheese, butter?

We can find various package for cream, cheese and better.Butter can be packed in aluminium foil to sticks, Alu foil fold packed butter,bricks( the packing video is here ）

Another common package for butter is blister, which is featured by small size and convenient access.( See how to pack butter on blister packing machine ) 

For cream, plastic bottle, Tetra Pak package and metal can are all available. Cheese can also be packed in blister. It can also be packed in vacuum sachets or vacuum skin packs.

Butter packed in plastic box video is below. 

Cream in bottle/Cream in Tetra Pak package/Cream in can/Cheese in VSP package