Ideas for 'cooked dairy' dinners!

[Lemonthyme]

I was just curious as to why.  Is it to denature the proteins?  There's no food safety reasons I can think of for cooking it for 30 minutes which was why I was asking but I don't know as much about food allergy.  Who has recommended this and what was their reasoning?  Just thinking if we could work that out there might be less onerous rules you could follow.  Is it milk protein or lactose that you are concerned about?

[Buntybear]

It is from the NHS and it is for a food allergy that he has now tested negative to . I am not sure what happens to milk when it is cooked that long but I do think somehitng happens to the proteins. ie when some people cannot drink cold milk can can have other dairy products

[abbysmomma]

There are some proteins in dairy (and eggs) that become denatured and no longer "reactive" once cooked for a certain amount of time. Kids that become used to cooked dairy have a greater chance of growing out of their allergies and eating cooked dairy is a part of the protocol for reintroducing an allergen. It doesn't always work that way for all allergens.

[Buntybear]

Thanks for sharing - I didn't know that 

[Lemonthyme]

Cool that was kind of my gut feel.  I work in the food industry and I know that certain foods increase allergenicity on cooking, some reduce so I didn't want to assume.  Thank you for increasing my knowledge!

Basically how denaturing proteins work is they are complicated structures and it is the shape which will cause the allergenicity I think.  Denaturing them breaks the weak bonds (hydrogen bonds and other types) and untangles them making the structure completely different.  Yep that makes sense to me!  I like to understand stuff!

[Buntybear]

You learn something every day eh?

[Lemonthyme]

Absolutely!  It's useful stuff to read about here with allergies.  Obviously I consult 'official' sources of information but so much about food safety is about what people really do in the home and places like this give me a bit of a window on that.  I remember saying to one company "I saw your bread recommended on an allergy awareness website because it doesn't contain soy so people who have soy allergies deliberately chose your bread, that's why it's so important to make sure cross contamination doesn't happen".

[abbysmomma]

Having both two out of three kids with food allergies and a PhD in protein biochemistry makes it easier for me. You're right on about heating breaking down the 3d structure of the protein and the antigen recognizing the structure. Bonus points for the mention of H-bonds! 

[Lemonthyme]

Do I get kudos if I mention van der waals forces too?  ;-)

I have a PhD in chemistry but nothing to do with proteins.

[Buntybear]

abbysmomma - I have a thread going in Food Allergies about introducing proteins and it has made me think - you may be able to answer this - by introducing milk proteins such as hidden dairy then cooked dairy, then heated and finally cold - does that make the body more readily accept the proteins by doing it in that order?

[*Ali*]

I also make a lovely chicken breast with a paste of yogurt and wholegrain mustard on the top and then cooked in the oven for 30 mins. Yummy.

[Buntybear]

Ohhh, sounds good Ali. Just those 2 things in the topping? Think I can manage that!

[*Ali*]

Yes just those two things. I think the recipe called for 5tblspns of yogurt or fromage frais and 1 teaspoon of mustard but we put double mustard as we love it.