You were making a cream based sauce for your pasta and decided to add some freshly canned tomatoes to the sauce. It tasted fine, but the cream started to curdle. What happened to the cream?

Answer & explanation:

Canned fruits and vegetables generally have a high acidity and salinity content, in order to prevent the product from spoiling, in addition to enhancing its flavor.

The cream-based sauce started to curdle due to the acidity present in the canned tomatoes.

By lowering the pH of dairy products, a protein in them called casein begins to clot. It is this clotting of the casein that causes the cream-based sauce to curdle.