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Whipped Evaporated Milk
The labels of some brands carry directions for whipping. Here they are:
Scald undiluted milk in top of double boiler 10-15 minutes. Cool and chill quickly. Set in bowl of cracked ice and whip until stiff. If it does not whip quickly enough to suit you, sprinkle salt on ice to hasten chilling. If whipped evaporated milk is flavored and sweetened it becomes a good substitute for whipped cream.
Evaporated milk whips because the scalding and deep chilling let its concentrated proteins hold air; the whole procedure hinges on temperature. Everything else is detail.
- Get it colder than you thinkThe milk needs to be at or just below freezing point — a few ice crystals at the edge of the bowl is right. Two hours in the coldest part of the refrigerator, then the bowl over cracked ice, is the reliable route. Chill the beaters and bowl too.
- Salt on the iceThe trick in the text is sound: salt scattered on cracked ice drops the temperature of the bath below 32F. Rock salt is the usual choice for an ice bath, though the recipe specifies only salt.
- Scalding in the double boilerTen to fifteen minutes over simmering water brings the milk to scalding temperature, somewhere near 180F, without a skin or a scorch. Modern canned evaporated milk is already sterilized, so the scald is about protein behaviour rather than safety, and it is generally held to help the foam.
- Sugar and flavouring lastAdd sugar only after the milk holds soft peaks. A little lemon juice at the end — anywhere from a teaspoon to a tablespoon per cup — is the usual trick for firming the foam, though the text does not call for it. Sugar added early keeps it slack.
- YieldA standard 12 oz can gives roughly 1 1/2 cups liquid and whips to about 4 cups, enough to top eight to ten servings.
- It will not waitWhipped evaporated milk weeps and collapses quickly, within half an hour or so and faster in a warm room. Whip it at the last moment; it does not hold like whipped cream.
- Not condensed milkSweetened condensed milk is a different product entirely and will not whip by this method. The can must say evaporated.
- OutdoorsIn a camp setting the practical limit is the ice. Without a cooler or a cold stream to sink the can in, the milk will not come down far enough to foam.
Evaporated milk was a staple of camp and trail cooking for the plain reason that it kept without refrigeration and travelled in a tin. Whipping it was promoted by the canneries themselves — as the text says, the directions were printed on the labels — and it was pushed hard in wartime, when fresh cream was scarce or rationed. Recipe books of the period treat it as a frank economy measure rather than an equal: sweetened and flavoured, it passes for whipped cream on a pie or a bowl of fruit, though it is thinner in the mouth and short-lived.