MILK FOR GROWING CHILDREN
When the child is big enough to thrive on undiluted, unmodified cow’s milk, it should not only be allowed, but urged, to continue on a diet in which this, the best of all foods, is the most essential part. An excellent form in which to feed milk to the growing child is junket. Eaten slowly with a spoon as a pudding, it is exposed to the action of digestion much better than milk swallowed by the glassful in a hurry and even if it is cold there is no danger of defective rennet action in the stomach because such action has already taken place.
Doctors still disagree as to the desirability of pasteurizing milk for young children (see “Pasteurization,” Chapter [I]), some holding that the digestibility is affected by the process. The truth is probably that strong pasteurization at a temperature above 157° and holding the heated milk unnecessarily long at such high temperature do change the properties of the milk so as to make it harder to digest, but that the main difficulty is in the change of diet from raw to pasteurized milk or vice versa. Let the child get used to the change by making it gradual, diminishing the amount of one and increasing the amount of the other from day to day in a week, until the change is completed, and there will usually be little if any trouble. The secretions of digestive ferments in the stomach soon adapt themselves to the change in the food. The same holds good in case of other changes, as, for instance, from whole milk to more or less fatless milk, with additions of cereals or other partial substitutes;—it is always advisable to make any change in the child’s diet gradual.
CHAPTER V
Milk Cookery
Milk should also be used a great deal more than it is by grown persons, not only as a drink but in the daily cookery. In some homes milk in some form is a part of every menu and the meals are more delicious, attractive and nourishing than the ordinary milkless diet, and are also less expensive, as the milk takes the place of part of the meat. Dr. Graham Tusk of Cornell University, who represented the United States on the Interallied Council of Alimentation, says:
“No family of five should spend any money for meat until three quarts of milk have been purchased, and this should be done even though the price of milk should go to twenty cents a quart. Absolutely nothing in the food line will keep children so healthy as their daily supply of milk.”
In cooking with milk it is well to remember:
1. That, although milk is a liquid, it contains a large amount of solid food and of exceedingly nourishing, palatable and easily digestible food, much more than many vegetables or fruits. While milk has 13% of solid matter, water-melon has only 2%, turnips 4%, beets 12%, etc. When substituting milk for water, you add nourishment to the food and it is well to keep in mind the ingredients,—the amount of protein, fat, etc., added in the form of milk, which may take the place of other similar ingredients in the combination.
2. That if milk is even but slightly sour, or if some other acid is added to it,—in the form of fruit, for instance,—it is apt to curdle by scalding or boiling.
The limits of a single chapter do not allow many recipes to be given, but a few are furnished under each of the several kinds of milk dishes, and a clever domestic science pupil or the ordinary good housekeeper and cook can easily add to these recipes indefinitely, by following out the simple suggestions offered.
All measurements are level.