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Milk for Babies

A method for preparing milk suitable for infants by curdling and reconstituting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Milk for Babies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cream and whey

  1. Allow 1/3 pint of new milk to stand for 12 hours.

  2. Remove the cream and add 2/3 pint of new milk.

  3. Add the rennet to the remaining 1/3 pint of milk.

  4. Set the vessel in warm water until fully curdled (5-15 minutes).

  5. Break up the curd and separate the whey.

Finish the milk

  1. Heat the whey to boiling in a small pan.

  2. Strain the whey through muslin to remove 'fleetings'.

  3. Dissolve 110 grains of powdered sugar of milk in the hot whey.

  4. Mix the whey with the 2/3 pint of new milk.

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

New milk
Provides the fat, proteins and sugar that make up the whole feed.
Rennet
Enzyme that sets the milk into a curd, separating it from the whey.
Powdered sugar of milk
Adds sweetness and lactose, the milk sugar, to match natural milk.

The step that matters

Set the vessel in warm water until fully curdled. Rennet works best at warm temperatures. If the milk is not fully curdled, the curd and whey will not separate cleanly, and the later straining and mixing will not give a uniform result.

“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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