SWEETENED CONDENSED MILK WITH ACORN COFFEE, A TIME FORGOTTEN PRODUCT REVIVAL

Abstract

Sweetened condensed milk is a long-storable concentrated product that can be found worldwide. It is used both directly in food and as a raw material for the production of other food products. Canned milk plays an important strategic role in the food stock reserves of many countries. Mostly canned milk is consumed by countries with poorly developed farming or dairy processing industries or regions where the existence of such branches is not possible. Worldwide, condensed milk is mostly produced in large milk processing plants due to the complexity of technology and the need for large amounts of raw milk and energy for its processing.  Nowadays, there are many varieties of condensed milk available on the market, where the most interesting examples are present in post-Soviet regions. This is explainable due to the significance of condensed milk as one of the most strategically important food products of the USSR (especially during the Cold War period), and also due to the cultural impact on its citizens as canned milk was the easily available sweet tasting product. Soviet canned milk production specialists upgraded and developed other varieties, such as sweetened condensed full cream or skimmed milk or cream with coffee or cocoa. Also, there were other taste varieties in development, but due to different factors, only a few of them got to the mass production stage. Most interesting is the use of coffee substitutes for adding to sweetened condensed milk, where you get a coffee-taste-like product, but without caffeine in it. In mass production, there is only one such product available – sweetened condensed milk with chicory, and unfortunately, its selling market is very limited. The objective of this article is to reveal the use of oak tree acorns as a caffeine-free additive for sweetened condensed milk, reinventing it for the modern world market, where demand for traditional and biological food is growing. The article contains sweetened condensed milk with acorn coffee explanation with a historical review, production theory, and prototype creation steps, that were based on original, but time-forgotten technology from 1939, and similar, but still used, sweetened condensed milk with chicory technology.