Got... Milk?

Betcha didn’t know that June is National Dairy Month. Yep, that’s a thing. The white stuff had a real moment in the 1990s with the Got Milk? advertising campaign. It seemed like every A-list celeb—think Jennifer Aniston and Michael Jordan—sported a milk mustache in magazine pages and on billboards across the country. Well, if public service announcements like that had existed in the late 18th century, George Washington probably would have signed up. He was a milk proponent, ensuring that, on November 4, 1775, the Continental Congress included a pint of the stuff in the Continental Army soldiers’ daily rations. Guess he thought it was a “moo-rale” booster.  

Look, we know some folks are on the lactose-free wagon these days. But we do think it’s udder-ly amazing how many unique historical moments—military history moments, at that—that dairy products have had. So pour a cold one, sit back, and enjoy learning some calcium-enriched history in honor of National Dairy Month.  

A Major Revolutionary War Battle Was Bovine Inspired  

It’s literally called the Battle of Cowpens. On January 17, 1781, Patriot General Daniel Morgan’s force engaged everyone’s favorite Rev War villain Banastre Tarleton at a place called Hannah’s Cowpens, a cow pasture near the Thicketty Creek in Chesnee, South Carolina. 

In 1781, it looked like what you’d expect a cow posture to look like—a sprawling, relatively open landscape with flora and fauna nibbled low to the ground by, well, cows, obviously. It was a risky move for Morgan to put his rifleman in such a vulnerable position, but with a few morale-boosting tactics, it paid off. The patriot victory on this unassuming cow pasture removed all hope that the British would win in South Carolina, and put Cornwallis’s army on a direct path to defeat at Yorktown.

Don’t worry—it’s unlikely any cows were harmed in the battle. Chances are, they were smart enough to steer clear of the action.  

With Food-Preservation Coming Up Short, Napoleon’s Necessity Was the Mother of Invention  

Enjoying your homemade pumpkin pie over the holidays might not immediately cause you to swell with thankfulness for Napoleon Bonaparte, but without the French general’s frustration over the limitations of 18th century food preservation, upon what vehicle would we spray that sweet, sweet whipped topping? Without Napoleon, we wouldn’t have evaporated milk—the key ingredient to perfectly textured pumpkin pie. Stick with us—like flies on a cow’s back—we’ll make it make sense.  

One of history’s most prolific military figures, Napoleon was well aware that armies march on their stomachs. In 1795, Napoleon offered a cash prize of 12,000 francs—somewhere in the vicinity of $300,000 today!—to anyone who could offer improved food preservation methods for a hungry army on the move. One man took the cake: French chef and confectioner Nicolas François Appert presented a grateful nation with an airtight preservation process involving sealing glass jars of food and then boiling them for a stable shelf life. He tinkered with all kinds of food to develop this process including, yep, dairy—preserving milk in sterilized glass bottles and even evaporating it. And if evaporated, boiled milk doesn’t sound so hot, even Appert noted it wasn’t super tasty.  

But in the mid-1850s, American inventor Gail Borden, Jr. improved both the process and the taste, and canned sweetened condensed milk was born. Recognizing the convenience and nutritional value, the federal government begam placing bulk orders for the stuff soon after the Civil War broke out. By 1863, factories in New York’s Hudson River Valley were churning out 14,000 quarts per day!

We Know That Napoleon Story Was Cheesy. Here’s Another One!

Cheese bombs. No, we’re not talking about something deliciously deep fried that you’d dunk into a pool of ranch dressing, and we’re definitely not talking about taking a hit directly from that can of spray cheese in the pantry (no judgement). We mean weapons-grade camembert, incend-dairy devices, literal moo-nitions.

If you believe everything you read on the internet, you might believe the story that a fired-up Napoleon ordered his men to load rounds of cheese into cannon when they ran out of artillery, bombarding his Prussian enemies not with grapeshot, but cheeseshot. Sounds a bit whey out there, right? Funny thing though—the cheese in question was reportedly his favorite Mimolette, which is the subject of another legend: French king Louis XIV ordered the creation of a superior French cheese to stick it to the Dutch and their widely popular Edam cheese during the years of the Franco-Dutch War (1672-1678). Much like the cheese bombs, this also probably doesn’t pass a historical smell test, but it’s entertaining to think about waging a war with dairy.

Even if not an offensive weapon in itself, the war-born Mimolette certainly resembles a cannon ball. Spherical with hard, pitted and often gray-tinged rind, cutting into it can be a dangerous prospect.  

Big Block of Cheese Day  

Look, cheese hasn’t always been so militaristic. Sometimes it’s used to bring people together!  

Anyone who’s seen The West Wing can tell you all about Big Block of Cheese Day — but this slice of modern pop culture has some historical roots, too. As White House Chief of Staff Leo McGarry explains, in 1835 then-President Andrew Jackson, legendary hero of the 1814 Battle of New Orleans, received a gift of a 1,400-pound block of cheese from a New York dairy farmer, which Jackson displayed at the White House for two years before inviting the public to come to The People’s House to consume it. Which they did. In under two hours.  

We know it sounds too gouda to be true, but it really happened. On December 10, 1835 The New Hampshire Sentinel ran the story under the headline:

“MAMMOTH CHEESE: Mr. T.S. Meacham exhibited in this city…a cheese weighing 1,400 pounds from the milk of 150 cows for four days at his dairy in Sandy Creek, Oswego County. It bore the following inscription: ‘To Andrew Jackson, President of the United States.”  

Though devoured in under two hours, the lofty cheddar — which reportedly measured in at four feet in diameter by two feet thick — left a rather lingering and…pungent…smell, for long after its demise.  

Isn’t all of this udderly fascinating?  

So turns out, dairy is kind of a big deal in military history. And we’ve certainly milked this moo-mentous occasion. However you choose to celebrate—raise a glass, bake a pie, share some cheese (no bombs, please), we wish you a happy National Dairy Month!