DRIED MILK

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 104, 19 May 1937, Page 15

DRIED MILK

History oi Manufacture It was not until 1898 that dry skim milk was manufactured in tliis country, says » writer in an American publication. From this preliminary work there has developed a business that has grown to large proportions. It is estimated that in 1935 there were produced nearly two miilion tons of skim milk equivaleait used in the manufacture of dry akim milk and dry buttermilk. In 1920 tbere were slightly over 2oO thousand: tons of £.kim milk equivalent used in the manufacture of these products. A recent publication of the Douthitt Corporation gives the followthg brief story of the early history of dry milk: ''Marco Polo, the Venetian traveller of the thirteenth century, recorded that the Tartar and Mongol warriors subsisted on dried milk made by boiling the milk, skimming off the fatty portxon which they put into a separate vessel, and setting the remainder in the sun to dry. Each soldier carried ten pounds of this dry skimmed milk, each day put a half a pound of it in a leathern bottle with as much water as .was thought necessary. Their motion in riding produced a thin porridgo upon which they made their meals. "From that long ago time to midnineteenth century, nothing more is on record concerning dry miJLk. "In 1855 Grimmade secured a patent from the British Government on a process for drying milk. This required the addition of carbonate of soda or potash to the fluid milk, which was then evaporated in open jacketed pans with constant agitation until a dough like consistency was obtajned. Cane sugar was added, and the mixture was then pressed between rollers into ribhons; this process was very slowj the product was of poor quality, high in moisture -and generally unsatisfactory. 'In the year 1887 malted milk, a combination of whole milk, exrract of malted. barley, and .wheat flour, was commercially produced. Although this product was not dry milk as we know it to-day, it led to the development of a suitable process for drying milk.'