My favourite is Elizabeth Cleland’s 1755 recipe for syllabub: “Sweeten either wine, cider, or strong ale, put it in a bowl, take it to the cow, and milk her on your liquor as fast as you can.” His style is well-balanced between erudition and everyman journalism, meaning that Milk is easy to read, although it’s jam-packed with often long and convoluted recipes including the fully archaic. Anyone who saw the need for a book about 1968 is quite alright in my book. Salt and Cod were previous titles, and I also remember his 1968: the Year that Rocked the World as a great read. Mark Kurlansky, author of Milk: A 10,000-Year Old Food Fracas is the best-selling author on a bewilderingly promiscuous range of mostly interesting subjects. Will you replace it with some milky ersatz of plant-based emulsion? For health or ethical reasons? Must your milk be organic? Must your cheeses be bland, or stinky? What is your opinion on permeate? Were you breast or bottle fed, and if the latter, what was in the bottle? (It’s merciful indeed that few of us remember the answer.) We seem to have wasted half the day already and I still don’t have your order. Will you have cream? Why yes, please, but some people are hypersensitive to the smell of milk fat, and avoid it in hot drinks for that reason. Will you have green or blue milk in your coffee? Some people cannot stand one or the other.

Even if you tolerate milk fine, you’ll likely not tolerate all its forms.

Milk kurlansky