cream line

plural cream lines · alternative creamline

1. The layer of cream that floats to the top of a bottle of milk that has not been homogenized.

   As pasteurization reduced cream line by about 15% some dairymen slightly under-pasteurized their milk in order to outsell their competitors.

   2012, S Herschdoerfer, Quality Control in the Food Industry, →ISBN, page 81

   2 more examples

   There is produced, however, at this temperature a cooked taste and the cream line is reduced to a greater extent than when the milk is heated and blown at 145° F.

   1914, Samuel Henry Ayers, William Trimble Johnson, Removal of garlic flavor from milk and cream

   As experts debated its merits, ordinary citizens remained doubtful about pasteurized milk because the heating process of pasteurization altered one of the elements they used to evaluate milk's quality: the cream line.

   2013, Kendra Smith-Howard, Pure and Modern Milk: An Environmental History since 1900, →ISBN, page 33