Probably many people who like condensed milk have no idea that this delicatessen was discovered by an ordinary confectioner from Paris named Apper. Once in the spring of 1804 when working at his cake-shop this inventive mind accidentally discovered that after boiling a bottle of juice has longer storage life. And milk can be stored longer, if it is kept in sealed cans, which don’t break during boiling as in case with glass cans.

 

Probably, it is not without the influence of this decent work that in 1849 American manufacturers invented the first apparatus for making sweetened condensed milk. In Russia a small plant producing sweetened condensed milk was built in 1881 near Orenburg. Soon two more similar plants were opened, afterwards several more, and it is necessary to mention that this product has become so popular in Russia, that a century later the state standard 2903-78 was developed, in compliance with which sweetened condensed milk is still produced nowadays.

 

How was it produced? Manufacturing process of preserved milk products even at the time of that American plant was quite perfect, so on the whole no global changes were introduced. And indeed, every brilliant idea is simple: remove certain part of water from pasteurized cow’s milk, add sugar and you don’t need to invent anything else.

 

Nowadays the manufacturing of sweetened condensed whole milk includes the following operations: preparation of milk and its pasteurization; concentration when 60% of water is removed by evaporation; addition of sugar syrup; cooling of the mix and crystallization of milk sugar; additional cooling of condensed milk and its packing.

In case with boiled milk it includes the stage of boiling.

Preparation of milk includes cleaning and standardization. Concentration is made by vacuum evaporators at the temperature of 55-75˚C. Different additives and fillers are added during evaporation or in a mix, which is already concentrated. Sugar is added to milk not in the form of granulated sugar, but in the form of syrup, which must be filtered. Through the process of vacuum evaporation the boiling point of water is lowered to near 50˚C, however its properties don’t change significantly: fat oxidation, vitamin destruction and other undesired processes are not observed. The process of condensation is less than 2 hours.

 

Boiling includes processing at the temperature of 100…105˚C during 4 hours. However, each manufacturer works out individual technical specifications and correspondingly individual processing schedule. Cooling of boiled milk is a very important processing stage. And here is why. 100 g of milk contain almost 14 g of milk sugar — lactose, which which is crystallized and bottoms when cooling. If cooling process is conducted correctly, the crystals that appear will be fine and invisible; if there have been any faults when cooling, the crystals will be coarse and apprehensible. The 8,5% fat boiled condensed milk is recommended for industrial use when manufacturing confectionary products (rolls, gingerbread, biscuits, croissants etc.), curd cheese packs and ice-cream.

 

The advantage of preserved milk products manufacture is that they are easy to transport, they have long shelf life, and that there is a large content of nutrients in the small amount of the product.

The preserved milk products are stored at positive temperature of 0…10˚C, in some cases up to 20˚C (in the territory of manufacturer’s works, even then not more than within 1 month) and relative humidity of or below 85%. It favours long-term conservation of canned products. The freezing of concentrated preserved milk products is not allowed — it impairs the product’s consistency, appearance and taste. The minimum temperature for sugar-free canned milk products is 8˚C, for canned products with sugar — 35˚C.