Who Invented Milk Powder?

Powdered milk was first made by Russian Doctor Osip Krichevsky in 1802. In developing countries, the use of milk powder has been adopted very quickly due to the expensive transportation and storage conditions of the product. Because it dries milk, which is 87% water on average, making it lighter and thus making it easier to transport and store.

In addition, since milk powder is anhydrous, there is no problem of protection from microorganisms, and transportation becomes cheaper as there is no need for transportation by refrigerated trucks. Since this drying extends the shelf life by 1 year, powdered milk is preferred over regular milk.

While Marco Polo wrote of Mongolian Tatar troops in the time of Kublai Khan who carried sun-dried skimmed milk as "a kind of paste", the first modern production process for dried milk was invented by the Russian doctor Osip Krichevsky in 1802. The first commercial production of dried milk was organized by the Russian chemist M. Dirchoff in 1832. In 1855, T.S. Grimwade took a patent on a dried milk procedure, though a William Newton had patented a vacuum drying process as early as 1837.

The known history of milk powder goes back to the Middle Ages. Venetian traveler Marco Polo recorded that the Mongols boiled the milk and took the cream, then dried the rest in the sun.

Russian Doctor Osip Krichevsky discovered the first powdered milk in 1802. Milk powder is obtained by drying milk or separating its liquid from its solid material. As a result of this process, a pure white powder is formed. Separation can be accomplished by spraying a small amount of milk into a heated can or pouring some milk onto a heated surface and scraping off the dried milk layer. Drying by freezing method is another separation method. Because freeze-dried milk preserves its nutritional values ​​to a large extent, and at the same time, it is possible to increase the nutritional value of the milk by strengthening it even more with this method. With this method, milk powder has a much longer shelf life than normal milk because dry environments are not very suitable for the growth of bacteria.

In addition to its long shelf life, powdered milk has other advantages over liquid milk. The fact that powdered milk does not need to be kept in the refrigerator and is much lighter than regular milk makes it possible to transport powdered milk over long distances in developing countries without the need for relatively expensive refrigerated meal transport rates.

Nestle Milk Powder

Nestle's milk powder, produced towards the end of the nineteenth century, was one of the company's first products.

Milk powder has also found different uses in the modern scientific world. The method of specific determination of proteins or nucleic acids migrated and fractionated on the gel in the electrical environment after transferring to a support layer is frequently used in modern science.

Milk powder is used as a powder in products such as chocolate, ice cream, baby food and biscuits, as well as reconstituting it into milk.