History of evaporated milk

Evaporated (condensed) milk, like sweetened condensed milk was first developed in the early 19th century and has been available as a canned product for well over a century.

French scientist Nicholas Appert, whose work on food preservation began in 1795, was the first person to evaporate milk by boiling it in an open container and then preserving it by heating the product in a sealed container.

In the 1860s, Borden and Nestle created an evaporated milk preserved in sugar. Patent dealing with preserving of milk after evaporation in a vacuum were granted to Gail Borden by the United States and England in 1856. These patents applied to concentrating milk without addition of sugar.

Milk in the 1850s was considered a child’s drink, highly perishable and likely to carry germs, Evaporating the water and condensing the milk, with addition of sugar yielded a safe, germ free environment resulting in sweet and condensed milk.

Borden later added evaporated milk (sugar free) to his production. This new and transportable product became a staple for Civil War soldiers.

In 1884, US patent number 308,421 was issued for ‘an apparatus for preserving milk’ and in 1885, the first commercial evaporated milk plant in the world was opened in a converted wool factory in Highland, IL, where ’evaporated cream’ was manufactured and sold.

By the 1880s, a new technology allowed unsweetened evaporated milk to be produced from a fine curd and to be preserved without sugar.

Borden introduced a formula similar to Mead Johnson’s Dextri-Maltose in the 1920s. In 1927, William M. Marriot, a physician, first recommended the use of evaporated milk in the production in infant formula.
History of evaporated milk

History of Minute Maid

Minute Maid is a product line of beverage, associated with lemonade or orange juice. The company is owned by The Coca-Cola Company.

It was started during World War II, where National Research Corporation of Boston, Massachusetts, developed high vacuum evaporation processes for dehydrating penicillin, blood plasma and streptomycin for use in United States war effort. The army wanted to extend and apply this method for food industry.

In 1945 National Research Corporation organized Florida Foods Corporation to build a production plant in Plymouth Florida. The plan was to fulfill contract with army. Since the war was over, the company diverted its focus to consumer market. They explored the possibility of marketing an “intermediate step” in the production process – frozen orange juice concentrate. And it was success. Then the name of Minute Maid was established. The name of Minute Maid was an idea of Boston advertising agency.

A few years later Florida Foods Corporations was renamed as The Minute Maid Company.

In 1960, The Coca-Cola Company acquired Minute Maid through a stock swap. The Coca-Cola Company then introduced ready to drinks chilled juice in 1973 and in 1996 ‘Minute Maid Premium, 100% Pure Squeezed Juice.
History of Minute Maid