When did whipping cream stop being whipping cream? If you look at the list of ingredients on the typical carton labelled “Whipping Creamâ€, you’ll see a dizzying array of ingredients including things like carageenan (a gelling agent derived from seaweed) and gelatin. And you’ll also see the fatal words “Ultra-Homogenizedâ€. Ultra-homogenized cream won’t whip properly. That’s why they’ve got to add gelling agents to it.
Real whipping cream has one ingredient on the side of the carton: whipping cream. It tastes like cream, whips properly, and will turn into butter if over-whipped.
Oddly, there doesn’t seem to be much of a price difference between the faux whipping cream and the real stuff. Why does the phony stuff exist at all? Does it have a longer shelf-life?
All the fake whipping cream is pre-whipped, or canned. So you’re trading the herculean effort required to break out your hand mixer to whip the real stuff for instant gratification. Isn’t that what America’s all about?
Hand-mixer? I don’t need no steenkeeng hand-mixer. I use a wire whisk.
Of course you use a whisk! Only sissies buy stuff pre-whipped.
To answer your question: The reason they buy it is shelf-life. Fresh cream doesn’t have much of one. By using the UHT process, shelf-life is extended by weeks. The downside is the decline in quality.
But for customers who buy their whipped cream (or worse, ‘whipped topping’) in cans or tubs, that decline in quality is hardly going to me noticed.
I actually don’t have much trouble finding stuff whose sole ingredient is ‘cream’.