Title Milk : a Local and Global History / Deborah Valenze

Published New Haven [Conn.] : Yale University Press, ©2011

Click on the following:
ProQuest Ebook Central
EBSCO eBooks
JSTOR eBooks

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xv, 351 pages) : illustrations Contents The culture of milk. Great mothers and cows of plenty -- Virtuous white liquor in the Middle Ages -- The Renaissance of milk -- Feeding people. Cash cows and Dutch diligence -- A taste for milk and how it grew -- Milk comes of age as cheese -- An interlude of livestock history -- Industry, science, and medicine. Milk in the nursery, chemistry in the kitchen -- Beneficial bovines and the business of milk -- Milk in an age of indigestion -- Milk gone bad -- Milk as modern. The ABC's of milk -- Good for everybody in the twentieth century -- Milk today Summary "How did an animal product that spoils easily, carries disease, and causes digestive trouble for many of its consumers become a near-universal symbol of modern nutrition? In the first cultural history of milk, historian Deborah Valenze traces the rituals and beliefs that have governed milk production and consumption since its use in the earliest societies. Covering the long span of human history, Milk reveals how developments in technology, public health, and nutritional science made this once-rare elixir a modern-day staple. The book looks at the religious meanings of milk, along with its association with pastoral life, which made it an object of mystery and suspicion during medieval times and the Renaissance. As early modern societies refined agricultural techniques, cow's milk became crucial to improving diets and economies, launching milk production and consumption into a more modern phase. Yet as business and science transformed the product in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, commercial milk became not only a common and widely available commodity but also a source of uncertainty when used in place of human breast milk for infant feeding. Valenze also examines the dairy culture of the developing world, looking at the example of India, currently the world's largest milk producer. Ultimately, milk's surprising history teaches us how to think about our relationship to food in the present, as well as in the past. It reveals that although milk is a product of nature, it has always been an artifact of culture"-- Provided by publisher "A history of milk and its many uses in different cultures of the world"-- Provided by publisher Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 323-335) and index Notes English Print version record Subject Milk -- History Milk -- Social aspects Cooking (Milk) -- History Dairy products -- History Food habits -- History Milk -- history Dairy Products -- history Feeding Behavior -- psychology COOKING -- Specific Ingredients -- Dairy. TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING -- Agriculture -- Animal Husbandry. HISTORY -- Social History. TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING -- Food Science. COOKING -- General. Cooking (Milk) Dairy products Food habits Milk Milk -- Social aspects Milch Milchproduktion Milchhandel Anthropology. Social Sciences. Manners & Customs. Genre/Form History Form Electronic book LC no. 2011002514 ISBN 9780300175394 0300175396 9786613150646 6613150649

  Permalink