486 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[November. 
horses since these two great races have been 
established; and for an American to be the 
winner is certainly a grand triumph for this 
country, and will go far to impress upon the 
whole world the importance of the American 
turf. Mr.Lorillard sent a great race-horse to Eu¬ 
rope when “Iroquois” crossed the Atlantic. 
Artificial Milk. 
BT PROF. F. H. ETORER, DEAN OF SCHOOL OF AGRICUL¬ 
TURE, HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 
Now that enormous quantities both of but¬ 
ter and cheese are prepared artificially from 
the fat of animals, it is interesting to inquire 
what has been accomplished, hitherto, in the 
way of making milk by artificial means. 
For although, practically speaking, the prob¬ 
lem seems far enough from being solved, it is 
none the less true that several attempts have 
been made to imitate milk, and that some of 
these efforts have been partially successful. 
It is true, withal, that the conditions requi¬ 
site for success have been tolerably well de¬ 
termined, and that it would not be very sur¬ 
prising if, any day now, some one should 
discover the final step which is needed to 
perfect the invention. 
At the time of the siege of Paris, in 1871, 
the distinguished French chemist, Dubrun¬ 
faut, turned his attention to the question of 
preparing and preserving foods of one kind 
and another, and particularly milk. He argued 
that milk may be regarded as an emulsion of 
fat in an alkaline liquid. This term emul¬ 
sion applies, of course, to a mechanical mix¬ 
ture of fat and liquid in which numberless 
minute globules, or drops of the fat, are held 
so firmly in suspension by the adhesion of 
the liquid to them, that they cannot either 
coalesce or readily separate out by themselves, 
as they would naturally, by force of gravita¬ 
tion, if there was no special attraction 
between them and the liquid. Dubrunfaut 
found, in fact, that almost any kind of fat, 
taken in the fluid state, could be emulsified 
in water that had been made^lightly alkaline 
with Carbonate of Soda, so as to imitate the 
serum of fresh milk. When viewed under 
the microscope, the globules of fat sus¬ 
pended in this way had the same general 
appearance as the fat globules in natural 
milk, and they were of variable sizes like the 
latter. On using a somewhat stronger alka¬ 
line liquid, the result was still more striking, 
and the emulsified fat behaved very much 
like milk. On allowing the liquid to stand 
at rest, a creamy layer rose to its surface. 
As the practical results of these trials, Du¬ 
brunfaut offered a recipe, here roughly trans¬ 
lated, for making artificial milk out of mate¬ 
rials which were to be had in abundance in 
Paris at the time of his writing. His direc¬ 
tions are as follows:—Dissolve in a pint of 
water some six or eight hundred grains of 
Sugar, or Glucose; some three to five hundred 
grains of dry Albumen (dried white of egg); 
and twenty or thirty grains of Sal Soda; and 
emulsify in this liquid some eight or nine 
hundred grains of olive oil, or any other oil 
or fat which is fit for table use. As regards 
this last point, it may be said that the be¬ 
leaguered chemists proposed several plans for 
rectifying grease, and for removing from 
cheap fats and oils any unpleasant odors or 
flavors which would naturally hinder them 
from being used as food. It was noted that 
the emulsion above described may be made 
more readily at a temperature of from 120 to 
140 degrees (Fahrenheit) than at the ordinary 
temperature of the air. The milky fluid ob¬ 
tained in this way was said to have the con¬ 
sistence of cream. But it could be reduced 
to the 6tate of milk by mixing it with an 
equal bulk of water. According to Dubrun¬ 
faut, gelatine may be used instead of the al¬ 
bumen of the above recipe. In this case 
some 1,600 grains of fat that has been emul¬ 
sified are mixed with a quart of liquid, which 
contains thirty or forty, or more, grains of 
gelatine. But in “ milk ” thus prepared the 
fat globules are held so firmly by the viscous 
gelatine solution that they can no longer rise 
as cream on standing. 
It should be borne in mind that this facti¬ 
tious milk was suggested by the necessities 
of a beleaguered city, and that it was in no 
sense a commercial speculation. The animus 
of the idea is clearly akin to that of a sug¬ 
gestion thrown out about the same time by 
Gubler, to the effect that by rubbing together 
an egg and some ninety odd grains of sugar, 
and slowly stirring the mixture into some 
sixteen hundred grains of luke-warm water, 
a substitute for milk may be obtained. 
Dubrunfaut was nevertheless sufficiently 
well pleased with his process that he ven¬ 
tured to hope that it might perhaps survive 
the “ fatal circumstances ” which gave it 
birth. He suggested also that when made 
from cheap fats with beet molasses, and other 
commercial products, it might possibly be 
cheaper than cow’s milk for rearing calves. 
Within a year or two, a noted Russian 
chemist, Schischkoff, has taken up this milk 
question anew, and has given considerable 
attention to the subject of emulsifying fats ; 
and so have several German observers, 
though neither of the latter seems to have 
paid any special attention to the making of 
milk. It appears in general that weak solu¬ 
tions of the Carbonates of Soda or Potash 
can only emulsify such fats as contain a cer¬ 
tain amount of free fatty acid, although the 
proportion of the latter may be extremely 
small. In other words, fats which have 
“ turned ” slightly, and have become the least 
trifle rancid, are specially well fitted for 
forming emulsions—a fact, by the way, which 
has been known from time immemorial to 
the dyers of “Turkey-Red.” There is no 
need, however, of having to use rancid fats 
in order to obtain good emulsions. Rancid¬ 
ity may be wholly avoided without the least 
trouble by adding a little pure Stearic Acid to 
the perfectly sweet fat from which emulsions 
are to be made. Schischkoff found, moreover, 
that fats emulsify more readily in proportion 
as they are hard, and that the softer kinds of 
fats require a larger admixture of free fatty 
acid than hard fats do. But it was evident 
that it is the chemical character rather than 
the mechanical condition of the hard fats 
which favors their emulsion, for in the trials 
now in question the fats were first melted 
and so used in the liquid state. The argur 
ment is that there is a stronger attraction 
between the emulsifying liquid and the con¬ 
stituents of the hard fats than exists in the 
case of the fluid fats, i. e., the oils. The 
most permanent emulsions were obtained 
from fats that contained fatty acids such as 
do not readily combine with alkalies, for it 
appeared that the alkali-salts of fatty acids 
have only a feeble adhesive attraction for 
fats. It is not at all necessary, in preparing 
emulsions, that the whole of the fat shall be 
attracted by the alkali, for if any one con¬ 
stituent of the fat has a sufficiently powerful 
attraction for the alkaline fluid, this attraction 
will suffice to emulsify very considerable 
quantities of material which might be wholly 
indifferent when taken by itself. Thus it 
happens that Oil of Turpentine, Petroleum, 
and the like, though by themselves inert as 
regards alkaline liquids, may readily be emul¬ 
sified therewith after a little Stearic Acid has 
been added to them. So too, a fat which by 
itself does not emulsify in an alkaline liquid 
may be easily emulsified in case another fat 
is first emulsified in the liquor. The fat 
which can be extracted from cow’s milk by 
means of a mixture of Alcohol and Ether 
contains a certain quantity of free fatty acid, 
and may consequently be easily emulsified. 
Melted butter, on the contrary, contains, 
relatively speaking, less free fatty acid, and 
less solid fat, and it emulsifies with much 
more difficulty. The fluid part of cow’s but¬ 
ter can hardly be emulsified at all, but it 
readily acquires the power as soon as some 
solid fat and a small quantity of fatty acid 
are added to it. By washing butter with the 
solution of an alkaline carbonate, its power 
of forming emulsions is destroyed, and it is 
remarkable that it is the solid fats in the 
butter which are chiefly extracted by alkali. 
Although milk is not a mere emulsion of 
fat and alkali, inasmuch as it contains al¬ 
buminoids, 6alts, and 6Ugar, Schischkoff 
nevertheless found that he could prepare 
emulsions very similar to milk by closely 
imitating its natural components; i. e., by 
first preparing a liquid similar to the more 
fluid part of milk, and then mixing with it 
fats of analogous composition to those in real 
milk. As other chemists had done before 
him, he found in whey a third albuminoid 
substance different from either Albumen or 
Caseine ; and he observed in his experiments 
that while Caseine without Albumen would 
not yield cream but only milk, and that while 
the two albuminoids together gave both milk 
and cream, the presence of the third new 
albuminoid was necessary in order that the 
cream should be in a condition similar to 
natural cream. Schischkoff describes a 
“ good ” emulsion as one that smears glass 
strongly, rises slowly, and forms a decidedly 
deeper layer on standing than would be 
formed by the fat which is contained in it; 
it should be white and lustrous. Under the 
microscope it appears to be composed of 
small globules of tolerably equal size. It is 
seen plainly that the act of emulsifying con¬ 
sists in dividing the fat into little globules, 
and fixing these globules in position by the 
adhesion of the emulsifying liquid to their 
surfaces. It was noticed that the globules 
in the emulsions were apt to be smaller in 
proportion as the molecular attraction of the 
liquid for any one of the constituents of the 
fat was greater, and that in proportion as the 
globules were smaller the emulsions were 
less permanent. Shaking promotes the sub¬ 
division of the globules, and may consequently 
hasten the destruction of an emulsion. By 
long continued shaking the emulsions were, 
in fact, completely decomposed into fat and 
soap, which would not again act on one 
another. The emulsions were destroyed also 
by cooling, by diluting them with much 
water, by allowing them to stand for a suffi¬ 
cient length of time, and by manipulations 
which promote the formation or separation, 
of soap, such as warming or the addition of 
strong lye, or the like. 
