Why does a carton of heavy cream last for 2 months in the refrigerator, but a carton of milk only lasts for about 1 week before expiration?
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Depends son if the heavy cream has stabilizer in it or not. With out any stabilizer the cream would end up lasting a week past it’s code date, so right around 30days before notable flavor and odor change. Most milk you get from the store will usually last only 2 weeks because it has been sitting in storage for a while, because stock rotation, you get rid of old before new. Someone else here mentions UHT or ultra pasteurization which can be useful, for non-dairy based milk, because of the caramelization of the milk sugar, to put it simply. Most dairy’s here in the states utilize a HTST system, which is high heat short time,which stabilize thebmilk to last around 20 days or up to 27 days. Cream follows the same rules as milk. The biggest cause of milk going bad earlier is because of a few factors, stabilizer in the cream to help it last longer, a piece of equipment was not cleaned as well as it should have been, or most common the raw milk before pasteurization had a high P.I count/tested positive for ropy, which makes the protein in the milk bond in a pretty cool way and it pours out like string. Really cool to see, will make you VERY, VERY sick if you consume it.
Source: I’m a dairy lab technician.
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