What is milk classified as once you pour it on cereal?

What is milk classified as once you pour it on cereal? - Cheerful diverse family having breakfast with milk and cereals

I recently came across an image posing the question of whether milk would be properly classified as a beverage, broth, or sauce once it's poured on a bowl of cereal. I'm not sure if it's any of those things, though, so I figured that Stack Exchange was the place to get an expert's answer about it.

To show that I have done some research on this: Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines "beverage" as "a drinkable liquid", and I'm not sure if it's a beverage anymore because you don't drink it, at least until you run out of cereal to eat. "Sauce" is defined by them as "a condiment or relish for food; especially: a fluid dressing or topping" which is closer, but most sauces I've used are much thicker than milk is, and I expect that there's probably a technical/jargon definition that's not in a general-use dictionary regarding production processes that excludes milk. It also defines "broth" as "liquid in which meat, fish, cereal grains, or vegetables have been cooked: stock"; I'm not sure that fits, either, because cereal's not cooked once you add milk to it.

Does milk have a formal classification as to its nature or status once you pour it on cereal, and if so, what is it?



Best Answer

TL:DR It has no such status. People just don't really have the need to categorize it, so it doesn't belong to a special category.

You are somewhat mixing up formal classifications and the process of categorization in everyday language usage. Dictionary definitions apply to everyday language, but they don't have a prescriptive status. Due to the way language and human cognition works, you can never come up with exact criteria that define whether an item belongs to a category or not. So looking up random cooking definitions like "sauce" is pointless in this case, even if an item nominally fits a definition, this does not make it belong to the category if people don't perceive it as belonging to the category.

Formal classifications about food do exist. In them, it is quite likely that you will find prescriptive definitions, intended to be used to determine whether an item falls into the category. These definitions have validity only within the framework itself - for example, a tomato falls in the fruit category when you talk to botanists, but not in the classification of foods used by the Culinary institute of America (it so happens that in this case, common language usage is firmly on the side of one of those, but other cases may be more ambiguous). It is a special feature of formal classifications that they only work well on the items they were intended for - E.g. I have seen several American authors categorize cakes by type of batter, and there is no good way to fit a cake made of quark-oil dough into one of those.

Regarding formal categorizations, I cannot think of a categorization framework that has a category into which "the milk in a bowl of cereal" can fit snugly. I cannot think of either a legal context or a scholarly context where that milk will come into discussion at all. In most cases, the mixture is just not perceived as a separate entity - people buy, prepare and serve bowls of cereal with milk as wholes. Also, there is rarely reason to see the milk in the cereal as a member of a category, as opposed to just "the milk".

The one context which might yield something would be books on food technology, concerned either with grain chemistry or with the industrial preparation of cereal products, like a description of the process for making prepackaged cups of yoghurt and cereal. They could have a need to refer to an abstract category which could include milk, yoghurt, or anything else pourable over cereal, and to discuss its physical properties. I have never read such a highly technical book on this topic, but I suspect it would simply use some quite broad category of everyday language such as "the liquid" and implicitly assume that in the context of the text, it is used for any liquid that is being poured over the cereal. It would be interesting if somebody can come up with an example, but it is quite certain that, if you try to use it in everyday life, it won't be perceived as a specific technical term.




Pictures about "What is milk classified as once you pour it on cereal?"

What is milk classified as once you pour it on cereal? - Glad family having breakfast at table
What is milk classified as once you pour it on cereal? - Unrecognizable person having breakfast at table with coffee and muesli
What is milk classified as once you pour it on cereal? - Crop unrecognizable male cafe worker pouring fresh milk from pitcher into aromatic coffee with foam



Quick Answer about "What is milk classified as once you pour it on cereal?"

TL:DR It has no such status. People just don't really have the need to categorize it, so it doesn't belong to a special category.

What is milk considered in cereal?

Yes, the milk in the cereal is a beverage OR a broth OR a sauce.

Is milk in cereal a broth or soup?

Many people would say no, and they are right. Broth is defined as \u201cLiquid in which meat, fish, cereal grains, or vegetables have been cooked,\u201d according to Merriam Webster's online dictionary. By this logic, cold cereal in milk can not be considered soup (oatmeal may be able to, but that's a whole other conversation).

Is milk in cereal a soup or sauce?

Milk is milk. It doesn't change it's nature just by being poured over cereal. Broth is an extraction of flavors in water, through the process of long, slow cooking. Sauce is any of a number of different preparations, some of which do contain milk, but milk is a single ingredient, not a sauce.

How would you classify a bowl of cereal and milk?

Heterogeneous mixtures (ESAX) Cereal in milk is an example of a heterogeneous mixture. Soil is another example. Soil has pebbles, plant matter and sand in it. Although you may add one substance to the other, they will stay separate in the mixture.



When you pour milk first




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