top milk??

[neal68]

i have an old recipe that calls for cream and top milk. i have heard the term before but i am not sure what it means for sure. can anyone help me with this??? neal 68

[menagerie momma]

Here's what I found....

Main Entry: top milk
Function: noun
Date: 1891
: the upper layer of milk in a container enriched by whatever cream has risen


I've never heard of it before - interesting!

Jessie

[BlackWillowFarm]

I don't know what "top milk" is either, but I do know that my milk separates into three layers when it sits in the fridge for more than a couple days. The first layer is a very heavy cream that clings to the spoon. I've heard this referred to as spoon cream. The next layer is cream, but thinner, like coffee cream and after that comes the milk. There is a distinct line between the milk and the cream. The cream line. I wonder if the "top milk" could be the thinner cream that's left after you take the heavy cream?

Does that make any sense for your recipe?

I'm assuming your recipe is old and written before the days of pasteurization.

[Wisconsin Ann]

Top milk is the upper layer of milk, after the first cream has been taken. It's supposed to be about 7% butterfat. Whole milk is 4%. (at least, that's how granma did it. I think you can also just take the top Xnumber of ounces...not sure how that works tho)

[gone-a-milkin]

The upper-most cream is the 'light cream',the second layer (which is still cream) is the TOP milk, and the rest is plain old milk.

[greenmulberry]

Hmmm, maybe half and half would be a good substitute for top milk if you don't have fresh milk that will settle, just store bought?

[neal68]

thank you all for your help it was very useful. happy turkey day folks

[hotzcatz]

I don't think you'd get top milk from homogenized milk, would you?

We used to pull milk off the top of the bulk tank to drink but that was after the cream had been taken off.

Last weekend, at a garage sale for the whopping sum of twenty five cents I bought a "creamer". It atomizes melted butter back into the milk so milk becomes cream again. I haven't tried it yet, but I'd never seen one before and it might work to make milk into cream to make ice cream with. It seemed worth the price to try, anyway. Dunno how much butter you'd have to put back into fat free milk to make it into "top milk", though.