What To Do If An Old-School Recipe Calls For 'Sweet Milk'

From extremely vague instructions (a staple of every midcentury church cookbook) to obscure techniques and ingredients, following vintage recipes can be a bit of an adventure. If you've ever tried to prepare your grandma's famous hoecakes or one of those Depression-era desserts that deserve a comeback, you may have been confused by an ingredient called "sweet milk." Does this mean sweetened condensed milk? Milk mixed with sugar? Evaporated milk? None of the above. In fact, the answer is much simpler than you might expect — sweet milk simply means fresh whole milk.

Sweet milk was a common way to refer to unspoiled whole milk throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s. During an era when refrigeration wasn't so common (or effective), the term sweet milk differentiated fresh, unspoiled milk from soured milk or buttermilk. Soured milk typically referred to milk that had gone a bit sour in the fridge, but could still be used in certain recipes. Buttermilk could refer to several different dairy beverages, but it typically meant the tangy, sour liquid leftover from making butter (modern buttermilk is quite a bit different).

These days, most Americans would throw out sour or spoiled milk without a second thought as soon as it fails the good old sniff test. However, in the past, people would often use older, slightly soured milk or buttermilk for baking to prevent food waste. Calling for sweet milk in a recipe was a way to clarify that it truly required the good stuff — fresh whole milk. The term was likely chosen because fresh milk typically tastes sweeter than older milk, as the sweet lactose sugars convert to sour lactic acid over time. The term fell out of use as modern refrigeration and dairy processing technology made spoiled milk far less common.

Since sweet milk is simply another name for whole milk, if a recipe calls for sweet milk, you can use regular whole milk. If you don't have whole milk, you could substitute 2% milk or properly diluted evaporated milk. Do not use sweetened condensed milk — although the sweet, thick pantry staple makes boxed cake taste divine, it is a completely different ingredient and cannot be used as a substitute for regular whole milk. You'll also want to avoid using buttermilk or skim milk, as they will bring a very different taste and texture than whole milk. Now that you know what sweet milk is, it'll be a breeze (or at least a little easier) to interpret cryptic old-school recipes.