Talk:Soured milk

Yoghurt and sour milk
Sour milk is similar to yoghurt (in fact yoghurt is one kind of sour milk). Yoghurt bacteria are active at a higher temperature than sour milk bacteria. As a European I am especially surprised by the following quote: Some older recipes use sour milk, but today it is unclear which dairy product was "sour milk". What's so unclear about that? You know sour cream after all, don't you?

Compare: milk --- cream

yoghurt --- cream yoghurt

sour milk --- sour cream --91.15.94.244 (talk) 19:07, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

What's in Europe 'sour milk', in America is "yogurt"(wierd, not supprisingly); What's in Europe 'yogurt' in America is "buttermilk" or "kefir". In North America you cannot find a decent (eastern)european yogurt, like they consume it in Europe. Shame. And the natural sour milk or as Americans call it "yogurt" is meant to be eaten as natural, with no sugary stuff in it. That's how it's healthy and how the Europeans eat it, and that's why Europeans have much more healthy habbits. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.98.144.142 (talk) 06:24, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Naturally soured milk harmful?
"One should not use milk that has naturally soured because this may contain toxins."

What toxins? Any source on that? Naturally soured milk that comes from a cow and not a box isn't harmful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.8.61.177 (talk) 21:14, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. The information in this article about naturally soured milk is incorrect. Raw milk does naturally sour, and is not inherently harmful. However, pasteurized milk does not sour. Although we tend to call it "sour" when it has gone bad, it doesn't actually sour; it just rots. So it isn't a matter of naturally soured vs. artificially soured milk; it's a matter of soured milk vs. spoiled milk. --A2jc4life (talk) 03:58, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Milk that coagulates without adding a sterile acid has bacteria in it. If the milk wasn't pasteurized and then inoculated with known bacterial cultures, it may very well have noxious bacteria in the mix. Therefore, milk that soured accidentally or without pasteurizing first is NOT very safe to drink, especially for very young, very old, or immune compromised individuals. Thinking that raw milk products are somehow less harmful because they didn't "come from a box" is foolish, like thinking eating raw hamburger is safer because it "came from a cow," and "not from a grill."

I fully agree with the distinction between spoiled and soured milk, but the two sections of this article directly contradict each other. Letting milk sit until it coagulates should be considered spoiled milk. Folks have been intentionally adding specific bacterial cultures to food items since before recorded history. Foxpoet (talk) 02:41, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Fresh milk contains a certain amount of lactic acid bacteria that live in and on cow's udder. These bacteria prevent other strains from colonizing the milk, and as lactic acid is safe to consume, such milk was always safe. Pasteurization was, at first, performed in temperatures below boiling point of water (95°C), which did not kill all bacteria, but increased shelf life. Such milk still used to sour properly. However, in order to sell milk in hermetic packages with long shelf life, fine-mist sterilization process was introduced. This process momentarily overheats milk droplets to a temperature well above boiling point (as high as 130°C). As all bacteria are killed, once the package is opened and left at room temperature, random bacteria create various bitter and toxic compounds, as milk spoils without souring. I remember how in early 1970s, milk in Poland started to go bitter instead of sour, and the urban myth was that manufacturer is adding detergent. In fact, they probably updated their sterilizer, inadvertently creating a problem for the public, which expected milk to be tasty when soured.172.83.164.49 (talk) 19:53, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Different meanings
I think the current version is somewhat confusing: At first, soured milk is defined as any food product obtained by acidifying milk. In particular, fermented milk or cultured milk are mentioned both linking to Fermented milk products. This implies that all those products (including yoghurt and kefir) are types of soured milk.

However, later on there is this statement: "Soured milk is commonly made at home or is sold and consumed in Europe, especially in Eastern Europe, Germany, and Scandinavia." This statement refers to a specific class of products, and not to any product obtained by acidifying milk. It would make no sense to say that e.g. yoghurt is consumed in Germany, Eastern Europe and Scandinavia - it is consumed nearly everywhere in the world. The particular product class mentioned in this sentence includes Sauermilch ("sour milk") or Dickmilch ("thick milk") in Germany, prostokvasha ("simply soured") or kisloye moloko ("sour milk") in Russia, zsiadłe mleko ("sour milk") in Poland, filmjölk or surmjölk in Sweden, ymer in Denmark, viili in Finland etc. These products are obtained by fermenting milk with mesophilic (preferring room temperature 22–28°C = 72-82°F) bacteria (mainly Lactococcus lactis). This fermentation process corresponds to natural souring of milk at normal temperatures. This is in contrast to yoghurt which is obtained by souring with thermophilic (preferring higher temperatures - above 40°C / 100°F or so) bacteria (Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus). It is also distinct from kefir which includes further components like yeasts etc. Cultured buttermilk (i.e. not traditional buttermilk) is a similar product but has usually a liquid consistency, not as thick as the products in this class.

The illustration in the article shows such a specific product, Ukrainian kysle moloko.

I think the two meanings must be made clear: The general meaning referring to any type of acidified milk. And the narrow meaning referring to the products where the souring corresponds to the natural conditions. --Off-shell (talk) 22:55, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Soured and spoiled milk, ascorbic acid, and Move (I now mean Merge)
1) The subject of this article seems to be intentionally-soured milk — what most people refer to as "fermented milk" or "cultured milk" — but it seems the most common meaning when people use the phrase "sour milk" is what the article separates as a different subject, that is, spoiled milk. Conforming with Wikipedia's guidelines, it would seem this article probably should be moved to either "Fermented milk" or to "Cultured milk" while this article's current title should refer to spoiled milk (the topic most people searching the title would be expecting).

2) There is a whole subculture dedicated to cultured/fermented milk products. It seems this article should have become much longer than it currently is considering this. 2b) Actually, I just checked BOTH of the suggested titles I gave in item 1, and both redirect to Fermented milk products. I change my suggestion in item 1 and suggest this article's content be merged into that article and this current article title be dedicated to spoiled milk (the topic most people would actually expect for the term "sour milk").

3) A tangential question: Several acids are mentioned in this current article as additives in the creation of pseudo-fermented milk products. Citric acid was expected, as well as acetic acid, but ascorbic acid was not mentioned (one of the forms of vitamin C); is ascorbic acid as a milk additive that infrequent that it doesn't make this article's longish list of acid additives?

— al-Shimoni  (talk) 10:03, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

"Curdled Milk" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Curdled Milk and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 June 13 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Sangdeboeuf (talk) 12:35, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Merge request: Merge with Buttermilk's 'Cultured buttermilk'-section
Apparently there are two milk factions here on English Wikipedia. There is the Buttermilk-faction, and there is the Soured milk-faction. Both maintaining their articles about the very same thing. Cultured buttermilk is soured milk. Thus I suggest that the whole section about cultured buttermilk is to be merged with the article about soured milk, and the article about buttermilk is to focus entirely on traditional buttermilk.

Ragnar Ekre (talk) 00:30, 7 January 2024 (UTC)