Dry Milk Manufacture

The concept of preserving milk by drying is very old, indeed.Marco Polo's account of the use of a sun-dried skimnfilk product by the Mongols is familiar to all students of the early history of dairying.Presumably, the art and use of milk in this way did not persist among t h e s e people, possibly because of the decline in need with change in warlike habits.According to Beardslee (1), the dry milk tablets produced by Nicholas Appert in 1810 were the first form o£ dry milk among Europeans.The tablets were made from milk concentrated slowly to a dough-like consistency in a current of h e a t e d air.Beardslee S. T. 0oulter l i s t s ten patents, five British and five United States, which were granted between 1835 and 1886 for various methods or processes for drying milk.All but one called for the addition of other materials, seven of sugar, one of sulfuric acid or some similar material, and one required the addition of an absorbent material and suggested the use of a carbonate of alkali, salt, borax, or some other preservative.The one not calling for additives was that of Percy, United States Patent No. 125,406 (1872), which envisioned, in general terms, the process of spray drying.There was additional experimentation and development during the remainder of the 19th century, but it wasn't until after 1900 that dry milk became a commercial reality.