A pint of contention

For tens of thousands of years, humans have been domesticating other mammals — cows, buffaloes, sheep, goats, camels, llamas, donkeys, yaks, horses — and keeping them for their milk. This has generated myriad products, from yoghurt and buttermilk through butter and cheese to toffee and ice cream, in many varied, culturally specific and resourceful forms. A sign of the elemental importance of this foodstuff is that our galaxy is called the Milky Way — and indeed the word ‘galaxy’ is derived from the Greek word for milk, gala. In Ancient Greek mythology, the Milky Way was formed when Hera, the goddess of womanhood, spilled milk while breastfeeding. Each drop became a speck of light, known to us as a star.

As the distinguished food historian Mark Kurlansky tells us in his arresting new food history, numerous cultures around the globe have milk-based creation myths. The Fulani people of West Africa believe that the world started with a huge drop of milk from which everything else was created. According to Norse legend, in the beginning there was a giant frost ogre named Ymir, who was sustained by a cow made from the thawing frost. From her teats ran four rivers of milk that fed the emerging world. The significance Hindus see in cows has a simple logic: cows give milk, milk sustains life, cows give life. Ancient Middle Eastern cultures figured out how to sour milk deliberately to preserve it in hot climates. Yoghurt is still so central to Persian culture that in modern day Iran, the idiom for ‘Mind your own business’ translates as ‘Go beat your own yoghurt’.

Back in 1861, in her Book of Household Management, Mrs Beeton advised her readers on the distinctive characteristics of mammalian milks:

Milk of the human subject is much thinner than cow’s milk; ass’s milk comes the nearest to human milk of any other; goat’s milk is something thicker and richer than cow’s milk; ewe’s milk has the appearance of cow’s milk and affords a large quantity of cream.