Milk!: A 10,000-Year Food Fracas
Author:
Genres: Cookbooks, Food & Wine, History, Science & Math, Engineering & Transportation
Book Type: Hardcover
Author:
Genres: Cookbooks, Food & Wine, History, Science & Math, Engineering & Transportation
Book Type: Hardcover
Leo T. reviewed on + 1775 more book reviews
I have not yet seen the book but the author was given a few minutes on NPR's Weekend Edition (6 May 2018) to flog it. He reminded us that Pasteur was trying to find a way to safely preserve wine, not milk. Yak milk, apparently available only in Tibet, is highly recommended.
19 May 2018: Obtained a copy from the LA County Library and found it very readable, although there are more recipes than I myself am interested in. The author, a baby boomer, has had a great many books previously published but I find he has done considerable research for this volume. He is succinct and covers a great deal of ground, beginning with ancient times and ending with fallout, Mad Cow disease, GMO, and organic farming.
The spread of homogenization, condensed milk, and cheese is especially interesting. The economics of dairying are covered and it seems there was almost always difficulties in making a profit. With hand milking, a herd of forty was about all a family farm could manage, but today a dairy in the USA needs hundred of cows to have a chance at making a profit.
"An oddity of the milk business in America and in Europe was that its growth was not determined by demand. Sometimes production grew faster than demand. What was motivating farmers was that the price for milk was so low that a farm had to have more cows and produce more milk just to stay viable." On the ranch in the 1950s, Uncle Lono milked less than twenty and the milk was picked up in the milk cans for transport to the co-op.
Cheese has long been made but at one time it was mostly for home consumption on the farm. With growing production of milk in some rural areas (think Wisconsin) cheese became an important product.
Mr. Kurlansky's essay on the PRC is good, with many details on how rare milk once was and that today it is a prestigious product in Red China. India is also well covered from ancient times to the present. He points out that for non-Hindu citizens hamburger is cheap nutrition and such families face leaner times as Hindu nationalists flex their political power. Also aged cows that are no longer productive are a problem for dairymen in India if they cannot be sold to a slaughterhouse.
Bibliography, index, and recipe index.
19 May 2018: Obtained a copy from the LA County Library and found it very readable, although there are more recipes than I myself am interested in. The author, a baby boomer, has had a great many books previously published but I find he has done considerable research for this volume. He is succinct and covers a great deal of ground, beginning with ancient times and ending with fallout, Mad Cow disease, GMO, and organic farming.
The spread of homogenization, condensed milk, and cheese is especially interesting. The economics of dairying are covered and it seems there was almost always difficulties in making a profit. With hand milking, a herd of forty was about all a family farm could manage, but today a dairy in the USA needs hundred of cows to have a chance at making a profit.
"An oddity of the milk business in America and in Europe was that its growth was not determined by demand. Sometimes production grew faster than demand. What was motivating farmers was that the price for milk was so low that a farm had to have more cows and produce more milk just to stay viable." On the ranch in the 1950s, Uncle Lono milked less than twenty and the milk was picked up in the milk cans for transport to the co-op.
Cheese has long been made but at one time it was mostly for home consumption on the farm. With growing production of milk in some rural areas (think Wisconsin) cheese became an important product.
Mr. Kurlansky's essay on the PRC is good, with many details on how rare milk once was and that today it is a prestigious product in Red China. India is also well covered from ancient times to the present. He points out that for non-Hindu citizens hamburger is cheap nutrition and such families face leaner times as Hindu nationalists flex their political power. Also aged cows that are no longer productive are a problem for dairymen in India if they cannot be sold to a slaughterhouse.
Bibliography, index, and recipe index.
