In England in 19th century, at that home the main industrialized nation of Europe not only fresh milk but likewise condensed milk was importance for urban consumer. As a relatively cheap milk product its consumption rapidly increased. It was, to a large extent used for feeding infants and young children.
Since ancient times, people have been aware that milk could only be kept fresh for a short while and that it was only available in the immediate vicinity of a cow. In the thirteenth century, Marco Polo reported that the Tatars were able to condense milk.
Nicolas Appert did his experiments on food preparation were begun in 1795 when France, under Napoleon, was fighting most of the other nations of Europe. Need for transportable food for the far-flung French armies had prompted the French government to offer a prize of 12,000 francs to anyone who could find a satisfactory method of preserving food.
Nicolas Appert condensed milk in France in 1820, and Gail Borden Jr. did the same in the United States in 1853, in reaction to the difficulty of storing fresh milk for more than a few hours.
While returning from a trip to England in 1851, Borden was devastated by the death of several of his children, apparently from poor quality milk obtained from shipboard cows. Borden was inspired by the vacuum pan he had seen being used by Shakers to condense fruit juice, and he was at last able to reduce milk without scorching or curdling it.
Gail Borden was the first, however to conceive and patent a process for condensing milk which proved practical and resulted in the development of a patent on the condensing process in 1856. He uses low pressure to make sweetened condensed milk. The first sweetened condensed milk in hermetically sealed cans was manufactured by Borden in the USA.
Although the claim of the patent granted Gall Borden was that of "producing concentrated sweet milk by evaporation in vacuo without the admixture of sugar or other foreign matter," Mr. Borden's commercial development was in the manufacture of sweetened condensed milk. Equipment design has greatly changed, but the principle of the vacuum evaporator developed by Gail Borden is still a foundation of the industry.
The business grew rapidly and spread to Europe by 1866 where a sweetened condensed milk factory was set up in Cham, Switzerland, by Charles A. Page, a US consul assigned to the country.
Until the early 1880s, unsweetened condensed milk was also produced and was sold open in the market due to the lack of knowledge and success of long-life preservation at that time.
The basic process for preservation of unsweetened condensed milk by heat sterilization was conceived by John B. Meyenberg in 1882, a Swiss citizen, and an employee of the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company.
Condensed milk in history
