I was making a cup of tea a few minutes ago. I added cream (room temperature, as it’s the no-refrigeration-needed kind of half-and-half) to my tea and it instantly curdled. I tossed it and made another cup, this time adding the cream to the cup before adding the hot water.
I wonder, though, would anything bad have happened to me had I drank the first cup? If so, what?
No. You just denatured the proteins in the cream. The same thing happens in your stomach when you drink your tea; you just don’t get to see it.
Nah, it’s perfectly fine (if a bit unappetizing, at least to me). Curdling is merely the separation of the solids from the whey. Cottage cheese is just that: milk curdles skimmed out of the whey. Yummy.
I see. Thanks.
My stinking suspicion would be that curdled half-and-half is about to make a hole.
In a large pile of ultrapasteurized half&half I found several bad ones which had solidified partly or entirely. Apparently these things DO need refrigeration in order to avoid the occasional bad one.
When you added the cream, perhaps it had already gone bad?
PS, some of them smelled like sour cream, others smelled like wet foot fungus or certain European cheeses.