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Photo: Adam Chamness / Flickr

In pre-industrial times dairymaids milked traditional breeds of cows twice a day by hand – in the days when milk was still rich with creamy flavour and cows lazily grazed on lush green farm lands. This all changed when Europe became industrialized and machines replaced the milkmaids. Today it is rare to find cows that are fed fresh pasture since herds are factory farmed in ever larger numbers, and milk no longer looks or tastes quite the same as it once did.

Dairy in pre-industrial times

While dairymaids worked at churning cream into butter and making cheese on the farms, the city folk weren’t as lucky when it came to accessing fresh, wholesome milk. Harold MgGee in On Food and Cooking explains that, ‘in the cities, with confined cattle fed inadequately on spent brewers’ grain, most people saw only watered-down, adulterated, contaminated milk hauled in open containers through the streets.’

Harold McGee adds that ‘tainted milk was a major cause of child mortality in early Victorian times.’ Modern people today are fortunate to be able to store pasteurised milk in convenient fridges.

Milk in industrial times

With the advent of industrialization, country milk could more easily reach the cities. McGee states that ‘rising urban populations and incomes fuelled demand, and new laws regulated milk quality. Steam-powered farm machinery meant that cattle could be bred and raised for milk production alone, not for a compromise between milk and hauling.’ Factories took over the dairymaids’ jobs in their efforts to produce products made from the milk that was supplied by the farms.

Modern milk – factory farming

The dairy industry is big business today and milk continues to be mass produced and supplied in various forms, from full cream to low fat to fat-free milk. McGee explains: ‘Today dairying is split into several big businesses with nothing of the dairymaid left about them. Butter and cheese, once prized, delicate concentrates of milk’s goodness, have become inexpensive, mass-produced, uninspiring commodities piling up in government warehouses.’

McGee, who is a food scientist, continues by saying that ‘manufacturers now remove much of what makes milk, cheese, ice cream and butter distinctive and pleasurable: they remove milk fat which suddenly became undesirable when medical scientists found that saturated milk fat tends to raise blood cholesterol levels and can contribute to heart disease. Happily the last few years have brought a correction in the view of saturated fat.’

New demands

McGee believes that there is ‘a resurgent interest in full-flavoured dairy products crafted on a small scale from traditional breeds that graze seasonally on green pastures.’

Perhaps the demand for artisan dairying and organic milk will issue in a return of the dairymaids of old.

Read A Diary Maid’s Story by Elizabeth Lister who worked as a dairymaid in Britain during the Second World War.