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Preserve

To Preserve Milk

A method for preserving milk by evaporating it into powder and storing in bottles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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To Preserve Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the milk

  1. Evaporate the milk over very gentle heat on a large surface and store the powder in bottles.

  2. Add calcined magnesia to the milk until the acid is neutralized.

Seal and heat

  1. Fill bottles with new milk and loosely cork them.

  2. Place the bottles in cold water in a boiler and apply heat.

  3. Once the water boils, remove the bottles after 4–5 minutes and secure the corks with wire or string.

  4. Replace the bottles in the boiler, remove from heat, and let cool.

Pack and store

  1. Pack the bottles securely in the coldest place available, placing straw at the bottom of the boiler to prevent cracking.

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Supplies the solids that remain as the dried powder after evaporation.
Calcined magnesia
Neutralizes the milk's acid so the milk can be dried and stored.

The step that matters

Heating and cooling the sealed bottles. Glass can crack from sudden temperature changes, so the bottles are heated in water for only a few minutes, then left to cool gently in the boiler, with straw protecting the base.

“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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