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Peptonised Milk for Infants

A milk preparation for infants using pepsin, water, sugar, and acid, then neutralized.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Peptonised Milk for Infants

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Add 5 grains of pure pepsin and 4 drops of dilute muriatic acid to each fluid ounce of milk.

  2. Digest the mixture in a water bath at 100°F (38°C) until it becomes clear.

  3. Neutralize the mixture with bicarbonate of sodium before use.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Peptonised milk
Forms the base of the feed and carries the main body and flavour of the finished drink.
Sugar of milk
Adds mild sweetness and a softer taste to the finished milk.

The step that matters

Digest the mixture in a water bath at 100°F (38°C) until it becomes clear. Pepsin is an enzyme that works within a narrow temperature range, and overheating can destroy it. The milk proteins are broken down gradually, so stopping too early leaves the mixture under-digested, while too much heat weakens the enzyme's action.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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