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I have an old pancake recipe (circa 1930) that I would like to try. However it includes as an ingredient "sweet milk." Having never seen such a thing in stores. I'm trying to find the best substitute for this ingredient.

Given that the "milk" readily available in the 1930s was probably much fresher and full fat (and perhaps unpasteurized), I'm thinking that the best modern substitute would probably be whole milk or perhaps half-and-half. Would this be the correct ingredient substitution to make? And would a 1:1 ratio be acceptable?

Anastasia Zendaya
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Confused Engineer
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4 Answers4

27

It's normal whole milk.

'sweet' was used to distinguish it from buttermilk in older cookbooks.

Joe
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when I was small (1950's) , the older folks referred to milk as either buttermilk or sweet milk.... including store-bought milk . People drank a lot more butter milk back then , so if you asked for a glass of milk , people very well might ask you to clarify - "Would you care for sweet milk or butter milk"? Sweet milk is now just called milk .

boomer by 3 weeks
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I grew up on a farm. We always had a milk cow. We used the terms "sweet milk" and "milk" interchangeably. It was whole milk. Mother would pastuerize it. We did not have the capability to homogenize it so the cream would rise to the top. We always stirred it before pouring a glass. The alternatives were buttermilk or clabber. Buttermilk was what was left after the soured milk had been churned and the butter removed. There were always small particles of butter left in it. Clabbers was the soured milk before it was churned.

user52813
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I always called condensed milk sweet milk, that's what my granny called sweet milk. Carnation sweetened condensed milk.

Azure
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