MILK, in the wine trade. The coopers know very well the use of skimmed milk, which makes an innocent and efficacious forcing for the fining down of all white wines, arracks, and small spirits; but it is by no means to be used for red wines, because it discharges their colour. Thus, if a few quarts of well skimmed milk be put into a hogshead of red wine, it will soon precipitate the greater part of the colour, and leave the whole nearly white: and this is of known use in the turning of red wines, when pricked, into white; in which a small degree of acidity is not so much perceived.
Milk is, from this quality of discharging colour from wines, of use also to the wine coopers, for the whitening of wines that have acquired a brown colour from the cask, or from having been hastily boiled before fermenting; for the addition of a little skimmed milk, in these cases, precipitates the brown colour, and leaves the wines almost limpid, or of what they call a water whiteness, which is much coveted abroad in wines as well as in brandies.
Milk of Lime; Milk of Sulphur. The name of milk is given to substances very different from milk properly so called, and which resemble milk only in colour. Such is water in which quicklime has been slaked, which acquires a whiteness from the small particles of the lime being suspended in it, and has hence been called the milk of lime. Such also is the solution of liver of sulphur, when an acid is mixed with it, by which white particles of sulphur are made to float in the liquor.
Milk of Vegetables. For the same reason that milk of animals may be considered as a true animal emulsion, the emulsive liquors of vegetables may be called vegetable milks. Accordingly emulsions made with almonds are commonly called milk of almonds. But besides this vegetable milk, which is in some measure artificial, many plants and trees contain naturally a large quantity of emulsive or milky juices. Such are lettuce, spurge, fig tree, and the tree which furnishes the elastic American resin. The milky juices obtained from all these vegetables derive their whiteness from an oily matter, mixed and undissolved in a watery or mucilaginous liquor. Most resinous gums were originally
such milky juices, which afterwards become solid by the evaporation of their more fluid and volatile parts.
Milk-Fever. See MEDICINE Index.