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BAKED MILK
Bake two quarts milk for eight or ten hours in a moderate oven, in a jar covered with writing paper, tied down. It will then be as thick as cream, and may be used by weak persons.
A long, slow reduction rather than anything resembling modern baking. The point is thickened, faintly caramelized milk for an invalid who could not manage solid food.
- The temperature is the whole problemA "moderate oven" is usually glossed as somewhere around 350F, but eight to ten hours at that heat would be far too much for a jar closed only with paper. The instruction probably assumes a falling or slack oven rather than a steady one. If you attempt it, treat it as a slow oven, 250-275F.
- Writing paperThe paper cover, tied down as the recipe directs, would keep ash and soot out while still letting some steam escape. Parchment paper does the same job; a tight lid or foil would trap moisture and work against the thickening.
- The jar"jar" here most likely means a stoneware vessel rather than glass. Any deep ovenproof vessel with a fairly narrow mouth should serve; a wide shallow dish exposes much more surface.
- Skin and stirringA skin will form repeatedly. The recipe gives no instruction about it; if you want a smooth result, stir it back in occasionally once the milk has begun to thicken.
- Whole milk onlyThe milk this recipe assumes was whole and unhomogenized. Use whole milk; skim or reduced-fat will give a thinner, less rich result.
- Keeping itThe long hot hold makes it safe when it comes out, but it is still milk. Refrigerate promptly and use within two or three days.
Baked or "boiled down" milk was standard sickroom food in the nineteenth century, when invalid cookery formed its own chapter in many household manuals. Its logic was practical: a cast-iron range held usable heat all night whether anyone needed it or not, so a crock of milk could be set in at bedtime and taken out thickened at breakfast at no extra cost in fuel. Physicians of the period believed long cooking made milk more digestible for "weak persons," and whatever the reasoning behind it, the result genuinely is different from fresh milk, with the lactose partly browned and the proteins denatured. Very similar preparations survive as ordinary foods elsewhere: Russian toplyonoye moloko and its soured form ryazhenka, and Indian rabri, all built on the same slow reduction. Such recipes typically sat alongside beef tea, gruel and wine whey, a reminder that nursing the household through illness was kitchen work.