Dairy product

Dairy products are generally defined as foodstuffs produced from milk. A production plant for such processing is called a dairy. Raw milk for processing generally comes from cows, but occasionally from other mammals such as goats, sheep, water buffalo, yaks or horses.

Dairy products include:

• Milk, after optional homogenization, pasteurization, in several grades after standardization of the fat level
  • Cream, the fat skimmed off the top of milk
    • Sour cream, cream that has been fermented by the bacteria, Streptococcus lactis and Leuconostoc citrovorum
    • Crème fraiche, slightly fermented cream
  • Cultured buttermilk, fermented milk using the same bacteria as sour cream
  • Milk powder (or powdered milk), produced by removing the water from milk
  • Condensed milk, milk which has been concentrated by evaporation, usually with sugar added
  • Evaporated milk, concentrated milk without added sugar
  • Khoa
  • Infant formula

• Butter, mostly milk fat, produced by churning cream
  • Buttermilk, the liquid left over after producing butter from cream
  • Butter cream?
  • Ghee

• Cheese, produced by coagulating milk, separating from whey and letting it ripen, generally with bacteria and sometimes also with certain molds
  • Curds
  • Whey
  • Cottage cheese
  • Cream cheese

• Yoghurt, milk fermented by Streptococcus thermophiles and either Lactobacillus acidophilus or L. bulgaricus
  • Lassi

• Gelato, slowly frozen milk and water

• Ice cream, slowly frozen cream
  • Ice milk
  • Frozen custard
  • Frozen yogurt

• Other
  • Airag
  • Kumiss
  • Viili
  • Kephir

Got Milk? is an international organization supporting dairy products, especially milk.

Eggs as dairy?

Most dictionaries define "dairy" in terms of milk products, which would naturally exclude eggs. What's more, the etymology of "dairy" does not seem to have any particular connection to eggs. Nonetheless, popular usage sometimes counts eggs as dairy products; the Open Directory Project, for example, at one point took cooking eggs as a subcategory of cooking dairy products.

Grocery stores in North America (and beyond?) often stock eggs very near to "real" dairy products, such that one can often find cartons of eggs sitting under a sign saying "dairy". This could conceivably be either a cause or an effect (or both) of the conception of eggs as dairy products.

External links

• Got Milk?
• MooMilk.com -- Dairy Industry information for children and dairy professionals