[Sca-cooks] Caramel Laura Secord

[Stefan li Rous]

Etain commented:
> t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net writes:
> > .  Cooking down milk
> > with sugar is a logical step in making a milk based candy, so she may have
> > been actually using condensed milk.
>
> I don't know how long this has been done..but I've home canned condensed
> milk.  I got the recipe from an old Amish cookbook.  I would imagine that
> it's been around for a long time..as a means to "keep" milk.

It probably depends upon your definition of a "long time". It's not
period. The process depends not only on the sugar and concentrating
the milk, but also in "canning" it where any bad beasties are killed
and then the food is hermetically packaged to keep out new infestations.
If you open that can of condensed milk you can't just leave it on the
counter for the next several days and eat it.

Primative canning was only done in the last half century before 1600
as potted foods. And even then it took them another hundred years to
perfect it. For awhile they were putting the meat in the pot, letting
it cool down, which gave time for a new infection to start, and then
they were sealing it with fat. After a while they started pouring on
the fat while the food was still hot, which sealed it without it being
open to the air for hours at the dangerous temperatures.

--
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
   Mark S. Harris            Austin, Texas          stefan at texas.net
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