Milk Shakes

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Milk Shakes are a thick, rich cold drink made with milk.

A good Milk Shake needs to be thick enough to give a little resistance at first when you try to suck on it (some say it should be thick enough to make you black out trying to suck it up.)

They are made from milk, flavouring syrup and / or fruit.

The addition of ice cream varies by geography.

In New England (including Massachusetts and Rhode Island), there is no ice cream in Milk Shakes. In the UK, and even in New York City, a Milk Shake can be just flavoured milk, with no ice cream.

In the rest of the world, outside the UK and New England, people will get very cross if you try to serve them a milk shake with no ice cream in it. To them, without ice cream, it is just flavoured milk, which you ask for by specific name -- e.g. chocolate milk, banana milk, strawberry milk, etc.

In New England, if ice cream is added, the drink is called something other than a Milk Shake. In Rhode Island, it gets called a "cabinet', with the name coming from the name of the square cabinet that the mixers used to be in at soda fountain bars. In the rest of New England, the drink with ice cream is called a "frappé" or a "velvet."

At home, you use a blender to make a Milk Shake. Purists insist, though, that you want a proper milk shake machine which blends and adds some air, but not so much as to make it frothy. The introduction of some air helps to thicken it, and helps to make it light enough to suck through a straw. To get it right, they say, you need the kind of blender where the blending jug is left up into the blending blade on a spindle. This allows you to tilt the mixing jugs as needed while the blades are whirring. The blending jugs, usually stainless steel on the classic machines, can be referred to as "mixing cans" or "malt cups."

More modern commercial Milk Shake machines have a container inside them, where the milk and ice cream are kept in a semi-frozen mix.

Some classic names for types of Milk Shakes are:
  • White Cow -- vanilla
  • Shake One in the Hay -- strawberry
  • Black and White -- vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup (Massachusetts)


You can also buy Milk Shakes already made now in bottles in chiller sections of supermarkets.



McDonald's Milk Shakes
McDonald's Milk Shakes were long rumoured to have no milk in them, because they just called them "shakes." But while they have no ice cream in them, they do contain milk. They are made by mixing milk with the appropriate flavouring syrup and a shake mix of their own. The ingredients are mixed up in refrigerated cabinets and dispensed from there.

Part of the thickener mix contains carrageenan, a seaweed thickener, but then many foods do nowadays. The carrageenan also helps the frozen mix from turning into a solid block of ice.

The entire ingredient list for McDonald's Milk Shakes is: whole milk, sucrose, non-fat milk solids, corn syrup solids, cream, guar gum, sodium hexametaphosphate, carrageenan, imitation vanilla flavour, cellulose gum.


History
used to actually be shaken by hand in a closed container
blenders invented in 1922


Language Notes
Sometimes called just shakes, as in "Vanilla Shake" or "Strawberry Shake."

Also called:
Batido de leche (Spanish) Top...