Cassell's dictionary of cookery

Preserved Fruit, Omelet of (a French recipe). — Beat the whites and yolks of six eggs separately; add a little zest of lemon to the latter; then mix the two together, beating them well, with a little cream, and two table-spoonfuls of apple marmalade, apricot, gooseberry, or any fruit you have. Pour it into the pan ; sugar it when in the pan ; turn it topsy-turvy into a plate; put it on a dish, cover the surface thickly with powdered sugar, and brown it with the salamander. — A. Von Kochheim. Preserved Milk. — The value of preserved milk is acknowledged by thousands of households in which no other form of milk is used. The history of this article is soon told. For many years the only sort of preserved milk was what was called desiccated milk, but it never was regarded with much favour ; the process by which it was obtained destroyed some of the essential constituents of the original substance, and thus lessenned its nutritive value. ' ' The method of condensing and preserving the milk is substantially the same at all the manufactories. The writer of this article," says a popular author, " has watched the process from beginning to end, on more than one occasion, both at Aylesbury and Middlewich ; it may be thus described : — Steam is got up about six in the morning, and the farmers who live within one to ten miles of the factory begin to deliver their millc about seven o'clock, and it is nearly nine before the last arrives. The milk is emptied at once from the large tin cans generally used in the trade into a trough, which conducts it through sieves into a large tank, holding about eight hundred gallons, in the department where the first part of the process takes place. From this tank it is drawn into large open metal cylinders, which are slung up by a crane, and placed in a hot water bath, in large tanks, somewhat after the PRE ( 652 ) PRE manner of the tins of meat in the chloride of calcium process, as adopted in the preservation of meat. After remaining in the Lath some time, they arc again lifted by the cranes, and emptied into large open funuel-shaped vats, whence the hot milk is drawn up, through a pipe in the centre, into the condensing-pans on the upper tioor. Sugar having been mixed with it, solely, let it be remarked, for the purpose of preserving it, it remains in these pans, subject to a somewhat low heat, for two or three hours, while the evaporation of the water is taking place, and the milk is gradually becoming condensed. When this part of the process, which may be watched thi-ough the glass window of the condenser, is completed, the milk, now about the consistency of liquid honey, returns by a pipe into a lower room, and is received again into the open cylinders, which are swung into the central tanks — this time filled with cold water — for the purpose of cooling. The regulation of the temperature during the whole of these processes is a matter of the greatest nicety, and of the utmost importance in securing success.' After cooling the condensed milk, it is taken to the ' filling room,' and run into the tins, which are at once soldered up, and packed in cases ready to be sent to their different destinations.