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Canned milk

After my mother told me about the birds and the bees, she added this warning: "Never, ever, confuse evaporated milk with sweetened condensed milk."

That's a lie, of course. It was my father who gave me the facts-of-life talk. But I do remember my mom pointing to nearly identical milk cans, then to pumpkin purŽe cans with her favorite pie recipe on their labels, and delivering that warning. Since then, I've made every possible culinary mistake, but I've never wrecked a recipe by substituting one milk for the other.

So it's evaporated milk for the pie recipe that's still carried on the pumpkin label; sweetened condensed milk for luscious lime pies. No substitutes allowed.

Basics: Both milks are condensed -- more than half their water has been removed in a vacuum evaporator before canning. Evaporation concentrates calcium and protein, and also results in a richer tasting milk as thick as heavy cream. It is also a lower-fat, lower-calorie substitute for cream or half-and-half.

Dip a spoon into sweetened condensed milk, though, and your diet is doomed. Up to 45 percent of its total volume is added sugar. Concentrated sugar preserves it, so sweetened condensed milk doesn't require sterilization after canning the way evaporated milk does.

The PET company's online history tells of early disasters in which gargantuan, steam-powered sterilizers "exploded with a force that was felt all over town." But they got their act together, and canned milks soon became staples for war rations and, in nations without ample refrigeration for fresh milk storage, for baby formulas.

Selecting: PET, Borden's (which opened the first successful "condensery" in 1857) and Carnation brands are reliable favorites, but store brands can be comparable.

Storing: A major reason for canning milk is that it can sit at room temperature for years without spoiling (about a year in Hawaii's higher humidity and temperatures). Refrigerate after opening.

Uses: That pumpkin can pie recipe is easy enough for even beginning bakers. Evaporated milk also adds richness to milkshakes, soups, instant potatoes, puddings, fudges and good old mac-cheese casseroles. It may be used in recipes that call for fresh milk if you dilute it with equal parts of water. Or use as-is in quiches as a cream substitute. Sweetened condensed milk stars in dessert recipes for flans, custards, ice creams and sour-sweet, lemon and lime pies.

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