There’s just about nothing else that adds a more comforting flavor and texture to food than heavy cream. The only downside is that heavy cream can also leave you feeling excessively full – very quickly, and there are two good reasons for that as you can see in the nutrition label comparison below.

The bottom line is that heavy cream has more than twice the calories and five times the fat content of evaporated milk. The first thing to notice in the label comparison above is that the serving size for heavy cream (1 tablespoon) is half the serving size of evaporated milk (2 tablespoons). That means ounce for ounce (2 tablespoons = 1 ounce), heavy cream has 100 calories, all which are attributed to fat as follows: 10 grams total fat, 7 grams of which are saturated fat, and a cholesterol content of 40 mg. The same one ounce of evaporated milk has 40 calories, 20 calories of which are attributed to fat like this: 2 grams total fat, 1.5 grams of which are saturated fat, and 10 mg of cholesterol.

Nutritionally, the differences are significant, though I’ve found that both evaporated milk and heavy cream have similar cooking and flavor properties, especially when used in recipes like mashed potatoes, gravy, pasta al Fredo, pumpkin pie, and more. That means substituting heavy cream with evaporated milk is a great way to add comforting texture and flavor without taking on excessive calories and fat.