BONNY CLABBER

Bonny clabber is milk left to sour and set on its own, eaten cold with sugar. The technique depends entirely on the milk of 1877, and it does not transfer to the milk sold today.

• The milk is the whole problemClabber is raw, unpasteurized milk held at room temperature until its native lactic bacteria acidify it into a soft curd. Nothing in the recipe heats the milk at any point, so any pathogen present in the raw milk — Listeria monocytogenes, E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella, Campylobacter — survives and, over hours at summer temperatures, multiplies. Souring does not sterilize; the acid arrives too slowly and too weakly to be relied on.
• Modern milk cannot do this anywayPasteurized and especially ultra-pasteurized milk has had most of the souring flora destroyed. Left out, it does not reliably clabber into a clean curd; it is colonized by whatever spoilage and pathogenic organisms reach it, and the result smells and tastes wrong. Homogenization also changes the texture of the set.
• "When milk sours and thickens very quickly"This is the author describing warm-weather fermentation as a convenience. In a modern kitchen it is simply a description of unrefrigerated dairy held in the danger zone, roughly 40–140F, for many hours. If you want a set, tart, spoonable milk today, use a current recipe for yogurt, kefir, or cultured buttermilk, where the culture is known and the milk is heated first.
• Sauce dishesSmall shallow glass or china bowls used for stewed fruit, preserves and puddings; roughly the size of a small modern dessert bowl.
• Setting it in the glass dishThe recipe's stated reason for pouring the milk in before it thickens is presentation: it is 'a very pretty addition to the supper table.' It also avoids disturbing the set, since a set curd tears and weeps whey if moved.
• Maple sugarMaple sugar was a common household sweetener in Ohio farm households, and for families who made their own it was cheaper than bought cane sugar rather than a luxury garnish.