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There are many alternatives to diary milk, but are there recipes that these alternatives can't be used for, just because of the nature of dairy? for example I want to make some millionaire shortbread slices ( but replace the caramel with fudge, normally I'd either buy a can of condensed milk or make my own condenced milk by heating whole milk and sugar until thick and gloopy but I'm wondering if the same condensing process would work with nut or oat milk?

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    I think it's a bit broad question, it would be better to focus on some recipe where you want to replace dairy milk or at least a single dairy milk alternative.
    – Luciano
    Commented Apr 16 at 10:21
  • all of them, as milk and milk substitutes have completely different compositions
    – njzk2
    Commented Apr 17 at 20:12
  • Hi Matt, thank you for clearing that up! Usually, we'd reopen a question that has been edited into an answerable shape. In this case, the actual answerable question is somewhat far from the original, and there are two existing answers which would be very nonsensical if we'd reword the title and reopen. So I'd suggest that you ask directly a new question about making condensed milk out of nondairy milks. Copying your last sentence to reuse as the body would be fine, no need to write a new text.
    – rumtscho ♦
    Commented Apr 18 at 11:27

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There are certainly recipes where the properties of the dairy itself are what makes the recipe work. For example, dairy will curdle when it is mixed with acid. This effect can be used to thicken custards and such, so any recipe that relies on that thickening effect won't work with non-dairy substitutes.

Two examples:

  1. Posset, a custard made with just cream, sugar, and lemons which sets because of the above-mentioned reaction, and key lime pie, which.
  2. Key lime pie was originally not baked, and was just made with lime juice, sweetened condensed milk, and eggs. It set/thickened because of this same reaction. These days it's usually baked because it sets better and because people in the US don't eat raw eggs as much, but if you wanted to make it non-dairy, you'd need to add some starch to help it set.
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A bit of a flipside to Esther's answer - if we're talking "can't substitute directly without any changes to the recipe", plant milks curdle/denature at a lower temperature than dairy milk, so anything that involves adding milk to a hot liquid may at the very least require some change of procedure, or the use of plant milk that contains stabilizers (providing those don't interfere with the rest of the recipe).

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