Margarine and its viscosity.

[stevec67]

The runny shite in question is: ‘I can’t believe it’s so good’ (honest!) can’t remember where we purchased said item.

Ah yes, I know this, it used to be "I can't believe it's not butter" and they rebranded it. The original is a 59% fat spread, butter and (true) margarine are legally >80%. Butter is naturally 82% fat, iirc. There is a low fat version of ICBINB, sorry ICBISG, probably about 40%. This will be thinner again.

These products are made with vegetable oils that are softer than most animal fats. This means that they have a lower melting point and are softer at any given temperature. This gives a very rapid melt upon eating and makes them less creamy and unctuous in the mouth. In addition there is less fat, 59% plays 82. The rest is water, held together with dairy protein and maybe some gels and gums. As soon as this gel warms up it melts, like jelly. Remember jelly melting from being a kid, it doesn't go creamy, it just melts.

You can improve the melt characteristics of any spread by using harder fats (higher melt point). However these are by their nature more saturated, longer carbon chains, fewer polyunsats. You could also use hydrogenated oils, these are now absolutely out of fashion. This runs against the claims that the marketing dept want to make. Low fat, low saturates, high PUFAs, you know the score. It's very hard (as in physically impossible to date) to match butter's unique melt characteristics while maintaining low saturates, reduced fats, whatever else. "Ye cannae fight the laws o' physics, Cap'n...she'll blow!"

I could make a synthetic butter substitute that would have a melt characteristic indistinguishable from that of butter. How? By fractionating a load of vegetable fats and making a blend at 80% fat that matched the fatty acid profile of butter. So many triglycerides, so many di, so many mono. So many saturates, so many unsats. So many C6, C8, C10, so it goes on. It's only chemistry. However this would obviously cost a fortune and the whole point of yellow fat spreads is that you blend a number of inexpensive and widely available ingredients to get close enough. A bit of palm oil, some rapeseed, maybe some hero ingredients like olive, make your emulsion and pack it at £1 or £1.50 a tub. It's a bit thin? Ah well, call it "easily spreadable" and they won't care. Mostly, they don't. It's cheap, it's palatable. Oh good, BakeOff starts in 5 minutes, I can watch people cooking without having to do any of the actual work myself.

 

[JensenHealey]

it’s funny you should ask.
We are staying with our son in Tokyo. This evening we went to buy some butter.
A 250g pack of French butter was around £9. Absolutely insane. We did find some cheaper Japanese stuff, which was probably spreadable butter at around £2.50 a tub. It tasted ok on toast.
That’s why everywhere you go in Japan, they give you margarine.

Japanese use little dairy produce by comparison to us. I have heard that the Japanese think most Westerners smell of dairy. Cheese, Milk & Butter are not a part of the typical Japanese diet.

 

[stevec67]

The same applies to most people from the Orient. They really don't understand dairy, especially fermented dairy products any more than we do fermented shark, kimchi, fried insects, chicken feet or whatever else. Tell them that you deliberately sour milk, separate the curds, then encourage it to go mouldy for weeks on end and they turn green even without tasting it.

 

[Cheese]

Now that we have you, Steve, what do you think of 'easily spreadable butter' ? I'm puzzled, especially when I see '100% bitter' printed on it. How do they achieve that ?

most Westerners smell of dairy

Funny that, and it could be true. It reminds me of the Portuguese, enter one of their flats and take a good breath. You can almost tell the brand of olive oil they use.

 

[tones]

Do you mean actual margarine or a reduced fat spread? They are different things with different chemistry.

Marge. Becel by name. Meets the classic definition of a water-in-oil emulsion wherein the oil is a vegetable one, according to the label canola, sunflower, palm. To my (admittedly old) taste buds, I don't find butter preferable and I like my triglycerides unsaturated!

 

[stevec67]

Now that we have you, Steve, what do you think of 'easily spreadable butter' ? I'm puzzled, especially when I see '100% bitter' printed on it. How do they achieve that ?
.

Bloody good trick if you can do it! I used to be a food tech in a sandwich factory that ran at 10 Dec C. Getting the butter to spread was nearly impossible. The best we managed was to whip it in a Hobart and get it on the rollers pronto. I suspect therefore that they are whipping it to a foam, which is about the only way I can think of at reasonable cost without adding oil.

 

[stephen bennett]

Why would anyone use margarine instead of butter, these days? I

Vegans and those with lactose intolerance would definitely choose the dairy free ones.

Stephen

 

[cooky1257]

we use a little mayonnaise for spreading on sandwiches........................

unavoidable ie lunchtime 'distress' purchase from Boots/Tesco etc

 

[droodzilla]

Bloody good trick if you can do it! I used to be a food tech in a sandwich factory that ran at 10 Dec C. Getting the butter to spread was nearly impossible. The best we managed was to whip it in a Hobart and get it on the rollers pronto. I suspect therefore that they are whipping it to a foam, which is about the only way I can think of at reasonable cost without adding oil.

President get halfway there with their spreadable butter:

https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/shop/gb/groceries/president-slightly-salted-spreadable-butter-250g

Quite stiff, straight from the fridge, but definitely easier to spread than regular butter.

 

[stevec67]

President get halfway there with their spreadable butter:

https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/shop/gb/groceries/president-slightly-salted-spreadable-butter-250g

Quite stiff, straight from the fridge, but definitely easier to spread than regular butter.

That's interesting. Note however that it's not butter but "Slightly Salted Dairy Spread - Fat 70%". Butter has legal compositional requirements that this does not meet. You can't call a product butter if it doesn't meet these requirements. This is a "blend of Président butter, rich cream and salt" and its legal name is the phrase above. Good work, nice bit of technology.

 

[PhilofCas]

Ah yes, I know this, it used to be "I can't believe it's not butter" and they rebranded it. The original is a 59% fat spread, butter and (true) margarine are legally >80%. Butter is naturally 82% fat, iirc. There is a low fat version of ICBINB, sorry ICBISG, probably about 40%. This will be thinner again.

These products are made with vegetable oils that are softer than most animal fats. This means that they have a lower melting point and are softer at any given temperature. This gives a very rapid melt upon eating and makes them less creamy and unctuous in the mouth. In addition there is less fat, 59% plays 82. The rest is water, held together with dairy protein and maybe some gels and gums. As soon as this gel warms up it melts, like jelly. Remember jelly melting from being a kid, it doesn't go creamy, it just melts.

You can improve the melt characteristics of any spread by using harder fats (higher melt point). However these are by their nature more saturated, longer carbon chains, fewer polyunsats. You could also use hydrogenated oils, these are now absolutely out of fashion. This runs against the claims that the marketing dept want to make. Low fat, low saturates, high PUFAs, you know the score. It's very hard (as in physically impossible to date) to match butter's unique melt characteristics while maintaining low saturates, reduced fats, whatever else. "Ye cannae fight the laws o' physics, Cap'n...she'll blow!"

I could make a synthetic butter substitute that would have a melt characteristic indistinguishable from that of butter. How? By fractionating a load of vegetable fats and making a blend at 80% fat that matched the fatty acid profile of butter. So many triglycerides, so many di, so many mono. So many saturates, so many unsats. So many C6, C8, C10, so it goes on. It's only chemistry. However this would obviously cost a fortune and the whole point of yellow fat spreads is that you blend a number of inexpensive and widely available ingredients to get close enough. A bit of palm oil, some rapeseed, maybe some hero ingredients like olive, make your emulsion and pack it at £1 or £1.50 a tub. It's a bit thin? Ah well, call it "easily spreadable" and they won't care. Mostly, they don't. It's cheap, it's palatable. Oh good, BakeOff starts in 5 minutes, I can watch people cooking without having to do any of the actual work myself.

Steve, that is excellent! and most gracious of you, cheers, Phil.

 

[Simon Dawson]

Bloody good trick if you can do it! I used to be a food tech in a sandwich factory that ran at 10 Dec C. Getting the butter to spread was nearly impossible. The best we managed was to whip it in a Hobart and get it on the rollers pronto. I suspect therefore that they are whipping it to a foam, which is about the only way I can think of at reasonable cost without adding oil.

Not quite - Most commercial butter manufacture is essentially a continuous version of traditional butter making; cream is cooled and churned and the emulsion inverts (flips from water continuous to oil continuous) as the fat crystallises and the buttermilk is released. The alternative is to invert the emulsion (in a homogeniser) and separate the buttermilk from the fat in a centrifuge. The resulting anhydrous milk fat is then cooled in scraped surface heat exchangers and worked to produce butter. This process gives more control over fat crystallisation and allows some cream to be added back in - giving the ability to control spreadibility.

 

[stevec67]

Not quite - Most commercial butter manufacture is essentially a continuous version of traditional butter making; cream is cooled and churned and the emulsion inverts (flips from water continuous to oil continuous) as the fat crystallises and the buttermilk is released. The alternative is to invert the emulsion (in a homogeniser) and separate the buttermilk from the fat in a centrifuge. The resulting anhydrous milk fat is then cooled in scraped surface heat exchangers and worked to produce butter. This process gives more control over fat crystallisation and allows some cream to be added back in - giving the ability to control spreadibility.

That's interesting Simon, which sites do this? I was in dairy for a number of years and the butter sites I knew didn't do anything this clever. Certainly the sites I know were very basic, certainly it was when I was last there about 10 years ago. Maybe the industry has moved on, not before time if so.

 

[Simon Dawson]

That's interesting Simon, which sites do this? I was in dairy for a number of years and the butter sites I knew didn't do anything this clever. Certainly the sites I know were very basic, certainly it was when I was last there about 10 years ago. Maybe the industry has moved on, not before time if so.

It maybe an NZ specific process but a number of Fonterra sites here use it, generally referred to as the Ammix process, described here: https://nzic.org.nz/app/uploads/2017/10/3B.pdf

 

[stevec67]

Thanks Simon, interesting link. It does say that these processes are used in Europe. I've never encountered them but I've been out of dairy for some time now. UK butter manufacture as I recall it was a low rent affair with a handful of disc bowl separators older than me, a churn and a clanking old packer. It was always the lowest margin bit of the industry, running when there was surplus fat and not otherwise. The fractionation stuff in the link was theoretical stuff that nobody was prepared to pay for. I'm not sure that has yet changed in the UK, people want their food for nothing. Maybe it's changing and we can expect soft fats in the future.