You already know that I really like ice cream, and butter is a close second. As the commercial jingle says, “Nothin’ says lovin’ like something from the oven!” With lots of melted butter on it, of course.

Cream. Yes, cream makes both ice cream and butter so delicious.

Cream was first used by Romans in the 800s, but they are not given credit for its current popularity.

That goes to people from Vienna who are said to have been using cream lavishly for the past 300 years. Today you can go into most Viennese pastry shops and request your pastry “mit schlag” which means you want it served with whipped cream on top. Yummy!

Originally, separation of cream from milk involved gravity. Milk would be poured into pans about 2-4 inches deep — known as setting pans — and allowed to sit in a cool room for a day or so.

A tool called a cream skimmer was used to remove the cream from the top of the milk. This was not an efficient way to utilize the cream, and it is estimated that about 30% of it was left behind in the pan.

People soon learned that deeper pans might be necessary to accomplish the task. Then came a tall can often referred to as a shotgun can, and so began the era of the deep-setting method of cream separation.

Shotgun cans were approximately 8 inches in diameter, 20 inches tall, and held about 4 gallons of milk. Once filled, they were placed in tubs of cool water. The height of the can made for more efficient separation.

Some cans were sold with glass windows for viewing the process and some had spouts at the bottom to drain off the skim milk. It is estimated that anywhere from 5% to 15% of the cream was wasted using the deep-setting method, an improvement from the use of the shallower pans.

They were available to the general public. Sears Roebuck and Co. sold the shotgun cans equipped with glass windows for 60 cents in its 1897 catalog.

We generally credit Gustaf de Laval for inventing the cream separator that revolutionized the process, but he had several predecessors who came up with the idea of using centrifugal force. The first machine to use centrifugal force was invented in the mid-1860s by a German brewer named Anton Prandt; however, he was not the first to think of separating cream from milk using a whirling motion.

Can you guess where that originated?

If you said “the Chinese,” you are correct. The Chinese separated fruit juices and oils from pulp using a hollowed gourd at the end of a rope.

Two additional attempts to develop commercially successful machines were tried, one in 1870 by a Massachusetts preacher, and one in 1874 by a German engineer whose model earned a patent in 1877 and became something of a prototype for our modern version used today.

Gustaf de Laval, of Sweden, is the inventor credited with making design changes to the cream separator which would revolutionize its use for farmers and, eventually, processing companies.

For the first time, milk would flow continuously through the separator instead of operators having to stop for refilling buckets, cans or jars. Many U.S. farmers imported de Laval separators, enabling them to expand their herds.

From the late 1800s into the mid-1950s, both Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward offered cream separators for sale through their catalogs.

Although de Laval’s separator did revolutionize things for the dairy industry at that time, there was still one problem — there was no mechanism to test the butterfat content in both cream and skim milk.

In 1890, Stephen Babcock of the University of Wisconsin developed a test to determine the percentage of fat in whole milk, cream and skim milk. Many historians credit these two men with changing the dairy industry forever.

Evolving from Babcock’s simple test, standards for cream products were developed and are in use today. Cream must contain a minimum of 18% fat, whipping cream 30%, and heavy cream 36%. Half-and-half usually contains 10-18% fat.

I will remember with fondness all the contributions made by those in the past so that I can enjoy that next bowl of teaberry or fudge ripple ice cream.

The Pennsylvania Milk Marketing Board appreciates the rich history of the dairy industry and those who made contributions so that we can enjoy its wonderful and nutritious products. And we support research and innovation that improve the industry for all.

PMMB is always available to respond to questions and concerns. I can be reached at 717-210-8244 or by email at chardbarge@pa.gov.

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