rich but delicate flavor. A ramekin of melted
butter in which to dip a morsel of lobster or an
artichoke leaf, a pour of cream over fresh
berries or pastry — these are wonderful
combinations. But cream and butter are
versatile ingredients, and cooks have found
other ways to exploit them in saucemaking.
Milk and Cream Emulsions Cream owes its
versatility to its origins in milk. Milk is a
complex dispersion whose continuous phase is
water, and whose dispersed phases are milkfat
in the form of microscopic droplets, or
globules, and protein particles in the form of
casein aggregates (p. 19). The droplets are
coated with a thin membrane of emulsifiers,
both lecithin-like phospholipids and certain
proteins; and other noncasein proteins float
free in the water. Both the globule membranes
and the various proteins are tolerant of heat:
so plain milk and cream can be boiled hard
without the fat globules coalescing and