Archive for the ‘milk’ category
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Model Dairy puts business into butter
Friday, May 22nd, 2009
Louis Dupont presented the Model Dairy’s sales ledger every month to the milk producers so that there could be no doubt as to what their hard work was worth. Since butter is 80% butterfat, it was logical to pay for milk in proportion to its fat content and what the finished butter was earning in [...]
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How Danish ideas shaped the Model Dairy
Thursday, May 21st, 2009
When Louis Dupont set up his dairy cooperative in 1905, he applied the lessons he had learnt in Denmark, where he had visited dairy cooperative some years previously to understand what the Scandinavians were doing.
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Gold in the butter
Friday, May 15th, 2009
François Demagny transferred the Model Dairy buttermaking business to Louis Dupont in 1889. Knowing that his project to make long life butter would require significant quantities of milk, Dupont set up a cooperative with local producers to supply 800 litres of milk a day. Business developed, but so did competition on the Brazilian market. Faced [...]
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How steam shifted French food output
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009
Long before grain started arriving in France from the New World, steam had already transformed the way in which goods, particularly food, were being traded around France. The arrival of the railways
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How steam changed European agriculture
Saturday, April 18th, 2009
European agriculture was transformed in the last two decades of the 19th century, when cheap grain from the new world started to arrive from Canada, the US and Argentina. This sea change came about when north American railways finally reached the ports and started to deliver steam shiploads of prairy wheat to the docksides. Thanks [...]
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From field to cream to butter
Friday, April 17th, 2009
A number of sources record that two hundred years ago Normandy cattle stayed outside all the year round. They were visited and milked by milk maids two or three times a day, regardless of the weather. The milk came back in
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Butter for barbarians?
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
Pliny the elder despised the barbarians for their use of butter. The Roman writer added: “In France it is in general use, more often among the poor than the rich.” These dismissive words stuck for centuries
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Milk shunned by the Romans
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
Milk has not always been valued in history: the milk-drinking herdsmen of ancient times sent a shudder down the spines of the Romans, whose cooking used olive oil exclusively. Butter eaters, for Pliny, were beyond the pail: milk was not even considered as food by the Romans until it had been turned into cheese. As [...]
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Butter: worth its salt
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009
Normandy’s Viking settlers brought cattle with them in their longboats (drakkars) and an appetite for dairy products. They routinely ate a coarse gruel, later adopted in the British Isles as porridge, as well as
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Butter in a bottle
Sunday, March 22nd, 2009
Writing in his Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine nineteenth century author Alexandre Dumas 1 describes how he always enjoyed a little luxury on his travels: “In all the countries I have visited, I have always managed to make fresh butter every day. I offer my secret Link to Wikipedia article about Alexandre Dumas here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Dumas#Non-fiction ↩
