Sour Milk
It is one of the ironies of modern life that kind of tickles me when I think about it, but when we come across a recipe calling for sour milk, we have to actually make our milk sour by adding vinegar, while most sour milk recipes were developed by our foremothers to use up the milk that had gone bad in days where most families had a dairy cow or knew somebody who did.
Granny Tea tells me that even though her family lived in town, they owned a cow that they boarded at the outskirts of town- just at the edge. When her father got home from work, the family would drive over to the edge of town and milk their cow. One milk cow produces more milk than most families can drink in a day, and even with butter and cheese making, the occasional crock or jar of milk would go sour. It was a wasteful housewife indeed who would throw out milk just because it was sour, so she made sour cream (which we now buy on purpose from the store) or used it up in a recipe calling for sour milk.
One of our kind readers emailed once to ask me if I really did use sour milk, milk past its sell-by date and slightly off in taste, in recipes calling for sour milk. I really do. Because my husband works at a grocery store, he sometimes bring me home a carton or two of the stuff, and then it's free. I use it in any recipes calling for buttermilk. It makes great biscuits and pancakes. You can also use it for these cookies (this recipe is from another reader):
Sugar cookies
cream together:
1 C shortening
1 1/2 C sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
add:
2 tsp soda
1 tsp salt
alternately blend in:
4 C flour
3/4 C milk (I used sour milk as you know 
makes a very sticky dough, roll with lots of flour if you're going to use cookie cutters, other wise, drop by spoonfuls and flatten with the back of a floured spoon, a butter knife, or a potato masher.
Bake 350 for about 7 minutes; they will be a soft cookie, bake longer if you like them a little stiffer or crisper.
Here are some very old family recipes using sour milk:
Inside a cedar trunk full of all kinds of treasures, I found an old graph paper notebook full of math and physics homework and in the middle of the notebook was a section labeled "Favorite Recipes," dated February, 1901. We are guessing it might be my great-grandmother's and, ever thrifty, she used her children's homework papers to copy recipes. But it doesn't quite look like her writing either. Perhaps it belonged to my great-aunt when she was in high school. At any rate, here are two ginger bread and one spice cake receipt(s) as copied down in 1901:
1 cup of molasses
Butter size of an egg
1/3 cup sour milk
1 teaspoon soda
2 eggs
1/2 cup of flour
spices
gingerbread recipe No. 2
2 cups of molasses
Three large spoonfuls of butter
3 cups of flour
1 cup sour cream or butter milk
3 eggs
1 tablespoon soda
1 tablespoon ginger
Spice Cake (very fine)
1 cup of molasses
1 cup of sugar
(1/2 cup) 2/3 cup of butter
1 cup of sour milk
3 eggs
3 cups of flour
1 tablespoon soda
spices
I think the two different measures of butter in the spice cake recipe are because she made an adjustment after making the spice cake, but that's just a guess. The 1/2 cup is the later revision. Don't you love the ambiguous 'spices?'
According to the 1911 cookbook, The Royal Baker and Pastry Cook, (I blogged about it here). Baking powder renders the need for cooking with sour milk unnecessary, but I think they're selling something.=)
A recipe for shortcake is introduced by this long paragraph:
"[O]ld-fashioned fruit short cakes were generally made with flour, soda, sour milk, and shortening, and were restricted to the strawberry season. We now use Royal Baking Powder for lightening them, employ all the fruits of the various seasons, and thus feast ourselves upon the delicate confections almost the whole year through. The short cake made with Royal Baking Powder and sweet milk is incomparably better, surer, and more healthful than the old-fashioned concoctions. Too much skill was required in combining soda and sour milk. The milk had to be at just the right stage of sourness; not a grain more of soda could be used than was sufficient to neutralize the acid in the milk, or the cake would be yellow, with a disagreeable odor and soapy taste; if too little, the cake was heavy.
Perhaps this was true with raw milk, but I have only once had cookies, biscuits, or pancakes made with sour milk turn out to be less than delicious, and then I do think we had waited far too long to use the milk. At any rate, it seems if you are going to cook with sour milk, you should leave out the baking powder.
God bless, and have a joyfully frugal weekend!
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9 Responses to “Sour Milk”
June 21st, 2009 at 7:39 am
Thanks for all the information. I learned alot from this post about sour milk that I didn’t know before. And, I love the old recipes, too. I’ve gotten a couple of recipes from my grandma and, of course, figuring out the measurements was hard because she never measured anything. I just got my first sour dough starter for bread making and I’m looking forward to it.
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:26 am
Fascinating post! Thank you, I learned something.
I have an early 20th C. recipe from my grandmother that calls for “butter the size of a walnut”. It is sobering to think that most modern home cooks wouldn’t have a clue as to what a walnut in its’ shell looks like, much less the size.
deb meyers
July 3rd, 2009 at 6:46 pm
I just wanted to thank you for posting such a wonderful post. After reading your post about sour milk, I decided to try it while making macaroni and cheese and no one was the wiser nor did anyone get ill from the sour milk. Thank you so much for opening my eyes and saving me not only money but time as well. No more wasted sour milk. Thank you!
July 4th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
I have often used sour milk in cooking- pancakes, biscuits, etc. (not curdled milk, but turned past the point you’d want to drink it. )
July 5th, 2009 at 9:29 am
[...] Sour Milk @ Frugal Hacks – This is the first time I’ve seen recipes that actually call for milk that’s slightly spoiled. Very frugal. [...]
August 5th, 2009 at 4:08 am
I have been looking at the comments and suggestions hoping to use some milk that is somewhat spoiled. I also just looked at an old (1964) Joy of Cooking cookbook I have to see if it had any suggestions for using sour milk. The book says that only milk that has not been pasteurized actually goes sour. Can I still use my somewhat bad, but pasteurized, milk in my biscuits, pancakes, etc.?
August 15th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
That’s up to you. I do, but you may rather not. Of course, by now that milk is probably far too gone to use, but for next time…=)
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:12 am
You can use sour milk instead of buttermilk in old-fashioned corn bread (the southern kind without sugar). If the milk is sour enough, the acid in it will interact with baking soda (but if you’re not sure it will rise, then stick to baking powder). You don’t have to worry about bacteria — baking at 350 will take care of them!
The recipe for corn bread is super easy and on the back of most boxes of cornmeal.
1 cup each flour and cornmeal (not self-rising)
1 c. milk or buttermilk or sour milk
4 t. baking powder (to use soda, see the box)
1 egg
1 tsp. salt (scant)
1/4 c. oil or melted butter
Mix it up with a wooden spoon, pour into an 8-inch square baking dish (pre-greased, or sprayed with baking spray). Bake at 350 for about 25-30 min.
If you bake at 400 it will come out with a darker top and softer interior.
You can also bake this the traditional way in a cast-iron skillet, but that would change the baking time.
November 6th, 2009 at 5:54 am
I’m always wanting to be as frugal as my foremothers, but don’t know how far I can push the envelope. Deputy Headmistress said there were some times she had waited “far too long” to use her sour milk. How do you know when you’ve let it sit too long? Can you use milk that has curdled and still have sourdough and other baked goods turn out nicely?
Is there any health risk to using curdled milk?
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