Malted milk requires the laughter of children to make it more enjoyable.
Walking into the Wisconsin Historical Museum on a random weekday afternoon will present hordes of kids swarming around the sidewalks and staring at the cityscape. I went looking for a glass exhibit of malted milk in the museum and found that children, who can easily blunt any quiet pursuit, enhanced this one.
The reason the kids made this trip more enjoyable was that they clearly
showed that the little pieces of Wisconsin history were worth paying
attention to, even if they are obscure and even out of the way. After I
waded through the sea of elementary-aged people like Gulliver through the Lilliputians, I made my way to fourth floor to see what could be said about malted milk.
Apparently, it's not that much. The display is just a single case that can
easily disappear into the full-time exhibits. It's modest, like most of
Wisconsin history, but tells a fascinating story of innovation and the work
ethic of a typical Midwesterners. As a farmboy and a history major, I must admit a strange fascination with things like this.
The tale begins as James Horlick made his way over to Racine to join his
brother, William, in a relative's quarry. The two soon tired of splitting
rock and moved on to form a company that would make their own brand of baby food.
The brothers experimented with a flour formula but wanted to raise the
nutrition level by adding milk. Also, the challenge was to convert milk into a dried, ready-to-use product. After many experiments, James and William succeeded and patented their process of making malted milk in 1883.
At first the brothers marketed their product as \Diastoid,"" but thankfully
they later changed the name to ""malted milk."" While malted milk was
initially sold for infants, it soon found consumers in explorers. William
was a patron for Antarctic exploration and Richard E. Byrd later named an Antarctic mountain range after him.
Eventually people beside explorers and infants picked up on the quality of malted milk. It found its way into soda fountains and malt shops nationwide, teasing tastebuds and showing up as ""malteds,"" malted milk mixed with ice cream.
Though the details eventually turned to the closing of the Horlick's Racine plant, I still lingered for a few minutes next to the case. Voices sprung up from the stairs behind me and I saw in the reflection of the glass, a phalanx of young people in tight formation behind a museum guide. I moved away and let the kids take the floor.
Their faces lit up, ignited by the spark of curiosity and they watched their
guide talk about another exhibit. Still, I noticed one little boy's eyes
jumping over to the malted milk display and taking in its contents as if he were drinking a malted. His smile brought one to my face and I left with a sense of satisfaction and some quiet laughter of my own.
blschultz@wisc.edu.
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