Studovala jsdm si něco k technologii zpracovábí mléka a došla fo historie. Kondenzované mléko máme od napoleonských válem a na salku se dalo ujíždět už v americké občanské válce.
Like instant coffee, Cheetos, and M&M’s, evaporated milk was also a by-product of war. As Napoleon’s conquests spread across Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, easily transportable and spoil-resistant food became imperative to feeding his expansive army. But technology was lagging far behind the emperor’s ambitions. So, according to the Evaporated Milk Association’s archives, the French government announced a lofty prize of 12,000 Francs to anyone who could devise a method to successfully extend the life cycle of food.
After 15 years of tinkering in his tiny kitchen on the outskirts of Paris, a confectioner named Nicholas Appert conceptualized the very first iteration of evaporated milk on January 30, 1810. His process involved “reducing a given quantity of milk to one third its original bulk by boiling in an open kettle” and then sealing it in a corked bottle and heating it again in a hot water bath. As the archives note, Appert’s invention was noteworthy not just in its originality but also in that he essentially pasteurized milk long before the time of Louis Pasteur, knowing nothing about microbiology.
Appert’s evaporated milk was the genesis of a tapered path to the canned version we see in stores today. The next phase of the evolution took place in 1853 when an American inventor named Gail Borden filed a patent for evaporating milk in a vacuum. Borden used this method to combine evaporated milk with sugar to create sweetened condensed milk, an essential field ration during yet another conflict—the American Civil War.
But it was a Swiss man named John B. Meyenberg who realized the unsweetened potential of evaporated milk. When Meyenberg’s sugar-free canned milk idea got little traction in his native land, he traveled across the Atlantic to Highland, Illinois. Here, along with a group of Swiss dairy farmers, he established the foremost evaporated milk plant in the US and the world. In 1884, Meyenberg patented “a process of sterilization by steam under pressure while the cans are agitated,” and the following year, the first canned evaporated milk was commercially manufactured. Today Borden’s method of vacuum evaporation and Meyenberg’s process of pressurized sterilization remain key foundations of the industry.
There was still one more problem to solve. The evaporation process caused the fat and water to separate, leading to an unemulsified final product. As a solution, homogenization was introduced in 1909, which took evaporated milk to new heights. The product, now emulsified as milk should be, not only had a significantly longer shelf life but was much more appealing to consumers in its amalgamated state.
During World War I, evaporated milk went to combat again, this time with the armed forces of the United States and its allies. It was “hailed as a boon to the fighting man.” After the war, it lived on through the discharged soldiers who continued to use the product in their civil lives.