Book recommendation: "Milk", by Anne Mendelson

[patandchickens]

Milk: The surprising story of milk through the ages by Anne Mendelson (Knopf, NY: 2008) ISBN 978-1-4000-4410-8

I'm still just halfway through, but those of you with dairy animals or an interest in 'real' milk and milk products (particularly cultured milk foods) just HAVE to read this book. It's really good - a sort of three way combination of history-sociology, practical handbook, and recipes. I particularly like the extensive discussion of how sweet milk (unsoured, pasteurized, flash-cooled and transported for sale) came to be viewed as a cornerstone of the North American diet in sharp contrast to how milk has both traditionally and presently been mainly used in the entire rest of the world.

HIGHLY recommend it. If you don't want to actually buy it, see if you can talk your library into it or get it via interlibrary loan.

Pat

 

[big brown horse]

Thank you!! I will look for it!

 

[Beekissed]

Thanks, Pat! I will definitely be looking for it at my library!

 

[freemotion]

Can you tell me if it has recipes and instructions? I am looking for a recipe and instructions for an old-fashioned recipe my mother used to make cup cheese with our fresh milk when I was a teenager. She doesn't remember where the recipe came from, and can't remember how she made it.....but we both remember the five gallon pails of fresh milk souring in the kitchen, in preparation for making the cheese. She remembers grating some cheese from the store and adding it at one point to innoculate the batch. That's about it.

And is it very different from the info on www.realmilk.com?

Ok, lots of questions, I know. Just wondering how much effort to put into tracking this book down, it sounds like I may have the info in Nourishing Traditions, too.

 

[reinbeau]

Thanx, Pat, just put it on my wish list for later!

 

[patandchickens]

Can you tell me if it has recipes and instructions? I am looking for a recipe and instructions for an old-fashioned recipe my mother used to make cup cheese with our fresh milk when I was a teenager.

It has a buncha recipes but I don't think it has that particular one (I'm still not quite done reading it tho). Are you looking for any ol' cup cheese recipe (I've seen a few, and could look for them, I'm pretty sure I remember where) or for one particular type?

And is it very different from the info on www.realmilk.com?

I didn't spend a lot of time at that site but they appear (?) to mainly discuss industrial pasteurization/homogenization/processing over the last 50-80 yrs and go on about the virtues of raw milk; some of that is discussed in this book, obviously, but quite a lot more as well, because only a smallish portion of the recipe part of the book is even *about* sweet (unsoured/uncultured) milk.

Probably worth ILL at least

Pat

 

[freemotion]

Thanks, Pat, I am a voracious reader and usually take on too much! I'll e-mail my library friend and borrow the book.

The recipe I am looking for is how to sour milk naturally to make the cheese, rather than adding something to raise the acidity quickly, like a culture or citric acid (which I have been using thus far) or for many cup cheese recipes I've seen, adding lemon juice or vinegar.

Many of these old skills are lost, and I think it is good to know how to work without purchased ingredients, even if I don't do it this way all the time. Kinda like knowing how to make sourdough from flour and water only, or how to get yeast from grapes. I did both, but will bake with purchased yeast, thank-you-very-much! But now I know how to respond in an emergency. Same with the cheese, I would like to know how to make a cheese just using my goat's milk and a bit of cheese from a previous batch. That would be very cool.

 

[me&thegals]

Thanks! I have it on hold at my library already. I've had lactose intolerance my whole life, have suspicions that the American diet recommends way too much milk, have access to raw milk if I want to try it, and so I'm really looking forward to hearing what this book has to say.

me&thegals