Heat coagulation

Heat coagulation is protein going from dissolved or folded to a set or a clump because of heat. Acid-set yogurt and rennet-set cheese are coagulation too, but the agent is not the stove. Coagulation is that dairy page. Denaturation is the broader shape-change. Egg-white temperature depends on the formula and the intended set.

Milk that curdles when you did not ask #

FAO: do not use colostrum for cheese; it turns into curd on heating and the curd is too soft ¹. That is heat coagulation as a defect. Ordinary cheese milk is set with acid, culture, and/or rennet; cooking the cut curd afterward is a different heat job — scalding to drive whey out, with continuous stirring so grains do not mat ¹. Jacketed vats and direct hot water are Heat transfer choices, not a synonym for scrambled milk.

Sour milk that precipitates on boiling is already acid-denatured; heat only finishes the clump. FAO uses a boil test among simple milk-quality checks ¹.

Vegetables are not curd #

NCHFP blanching heats in boiling water or steam to stop enzymes and to wilt tissue ². Texture changes because cells soften, not because you made cheese. Do not copy blanch times onto eggs.

Eggs #

21 CFR Part 160 standardizes dried, frozen, and liquid egg products and declines an identity standard for shell eggs as such ³. Cooks still set those proteins with heat. Watch white going from clear to opaque, yolk thickening, custard coating a spoon. Stop by those cues. A number without a sourced thermometer protocol does not belong here. See Egg.

Observe: tender set versus rubber; curd grains that are elastic versus mush. Protein is the material. Enzymes die in the same heat that sets other proteins — different foods, same family of damage if you overshoot.