Chapter 208: The Milk Craze
As a result, after half an hour, Xiang Chuan finally had a little time to study egg white.
She chugged juice to moisten her throat while somewhat impatiently swiping through the browsing page on her personal terminal with her fingertip.
It wasn’t that Xiang Chuan felt annoyed—after all, agreeing to let Class Eight Grade One enter the kitchen meant she had already foreseen all sorts of mishaps, especially with the school anniversary as a precedent—but time was quite tight now.
That afternoon, they were dragged by the excited Manager Hill and basically rushed through the remaining farmland in a cursory visit. If not for the production escort ship living up to its reputation as the fleet’s granary, with its three industrial zones occupying two-thirds of the escort ship’s area, Xiang Chuan would have suspected that Manager Hill planned to just circle the farmland once and then drag her straight to the kitchen.
Even so, they gathered at the plaza at 2 p.m. after their nap and somehow completed the itinerary that originally needed four hours by 4 p.m., finishing it in just two hours at a speed like a special forces operative on a short video website.
Is this really okay? Xiang Chuan thought worriedly as she opened the kitchen AI’s command light screen and input the ingredients and seasonings needed later.
However… it really was okay!
If it were another fleet, especially the education-focused residents of the Second Fleet, seeing Manager Hill’s behavior, Captain Mark Bay’s personal terminal email would have been bombarded with tens of thousands of complaint letters by now.
But this was the Third Fleet, the Third Fleet that regarded agriculture and agricultural product processing as its lifeblood! If Xiang Chuan’s recipe could bring positive impact to any industrial department on the production escort ship, let alone speedrunning all the mandatory high school production escort ship visit activities, the Third Fleet folks could even consider canceling the afternoon visit activity.
As long as Xiang Chuan could produce that so-called salad dressing to make any vegetable the market’s darling, whether the Agriculture Bureau or the large and small agricultural product processing companies in the group would be willing to brave the pressure from the First Fleet and Second Fleet to take the risk.
If Xiang Chuan knew their thoughts, she would definitely step back three steps and shake her head: No need, really no need.
It was just mayonnaise! If not for having money at home to casually gorge on fruit, she would have considered making salad sooner or later too!
——
Among the recipes in Geegle’s search results, quite a few were baked goods, like egg white cake and Vienna shortbread, which Xiang Chuan decisively abandoned.
What a joke, the school’s roaster hadn’t even baked a single loaf of bread yet—something more difficult like cake? Hah, let’s talk after successfully baking a cake base.
Among the remaining options, Xiang Chuan was most interested in desserts.
The former “arch-nemesis” steamed milk pudding was one, and also mousse.
In Xiang Chuan’s impression, desserts like mousse were like jelly snacks, needing some special ingredients to make them coagulate.
Fortunately, there are always more solutions than problems. When she transmigrated here, the internet was already researching high-end and low-end versions of various recipe steps—no gelatin mousse could naturally be made too, just that…
She lifted her head from the light screen, looked at Manager Hill wandering around the kitchen, and asked:
“Manager Hill, does the production escort ship currently have fruit available for the canteen?”
Manager Hill was curiously observing the semi-finished mayonnaise made by the Class 8 Members. Hearing Xiang Chuan call her, she quickly looked up, but upon hearing the question, she couldn’t help but look troubled:
“Although mass production planting of fruit is being promoted, the sowing period is basically set in spring. We plan to sow in two quarters, so fruit is still scarce now. Even on the Fourth Production Escort Ship where sowing has already started, harvest is at least one or two months away, or up to a year…”
Meaning, fruit can’t be eaten casually yet?
Xiang Chuan decisively closed the website with the fruit mousse recipe.
Although with her pocket money amount, treating her classmates to fruit mousse would be no big deal, but under everyone’s watchful eyes, leading the whole class to gorge on fruit still felt pressuring. After all, Yue Xiang Restaurant and A Bite of China Club Small Restaurant’s juice and fruit milk weren’t cheap either.
——
The advantage of steamed milk pudding was that even without red beans or fruit as garnish, it was delicious on its own.
And the only trouble was those two layers of milk skin.
Xiang Chuan took a deep breath, mentally prepared herself to face this little dessert that had made her want to enter the kitchen even on a sweltering power-outage day back then.
—Who knows how she had thought to make steamed milk pudding during a blackout back then! The refrigerator wasn’t powered, so the only edible thing was steamed milk pudding!
As an entry-level dessert, steamed milk pudding’s materials were also extremely simple: milk, egg white, sugar.
Xiang Chuan shook the milk bottle; the transparent glass bottle had a sterilized label, clearly sourced from the market department.
New milk dish!
The other class students standing outside the kitchen and some First Year High School Class Eight Students who had free time saw Xiang Chuan pick up the milk, and their eyes lit up.
This was the Third Fleet’s most popular drink! —
On the Third Fleet Main Ship, Xiang Chuan’s image of drinking fruit milk anytime anywhere at school and in Xiang Xue Live Stream Room was too deeply ingrained, so many were curious about this drink, but upon hearing that one of its raw materials was fruit, many temporarily gave up the idea.
After all, not everyone was like the thriving Xiang Family, raking in gold daily.
But some people were really craving it, so they thought, since they couldn’t afford the “fruit” part of fruit milk, the “milk” part should be affordable!
Milk wasn’t some rarity; when major fleets made liquid food, milk was one of the important ingredients, so its market price stayed at normal meat levels (after all, counted as a byproduct of animal husbandry).
But how to drink it after buying?
All ingredients on the market were raw, and milk was the same, even if it had undergone sterilization.
Yes, modern miraculous technology achieved sterilization without heating!
But in modern people’s fixed mindset, since milk was an animal husbandry byproduct, it needed cooking to be drinkable. But… how to cook it?
Coincidentally (or rather, as expected) among these people were fans of Xiang Xue Live Stream Room. They deliberately picked a time when Xiang Chuan was accompanying the live stream and spammed this question several times in the bullet comments, which Xiang Chuan saw.
It was then that Xiang Chuan looked up the information and learned how miraculous modern milk was. With an expression like she couldn’t bear to look, she glanced at the live stream room comment section and said:
“If 21st Century people saw this milk, those dessert makers would go crazy… cough, off topic. Since there are no harmful bacteria, just drink it directly. But raw milk has a fishy smell; if you can’t get used to it, heat it first—the fishy smell will be mostly gone after heating, then drink it. In theory, freshly boiled milk is quite hot; it’s best to let it cool to around 50-60 degrees before drinking. Freshly boiled milk comes with some natural sweetness, though some might find the taste bland… Although raw milk shouldn’t be a problem, just in case—if you find boiled milk bland, you can add some sugar to taste and stir, adjusting the sweetness yourself.”
As she spoke, Xiang Chuan noticed her personal terminal’s message alerts going crazy. Opening it, it was Director John from the Information Turbulence Processing Office. Only then did Xiang Chuan belatedly realize she had revealed the cooking method for milk. She gave a dry laugh, left a “wait a moment” in front of the lens, and disappeared somewhere.
A few days later, these people found that the Agriculture Bureau’s official SNS had posted an announcement. Clicking it, it turned out to be simple milk cooking methods! Even the sweet milk recipe was included!
Since this recipe (Xiang Chuan: something so rudimentary can’t be called a recipe!) appeared here, it meant hot milk and sweet milk, like vegetable soup, had been authorized for all Third Fleet residents.
Everyone cheered and rushed to place market orders for a lot of milk; even residents previously uninterested in milk bought plenty. Because the Agriculture Bureau’s published data showed drinking milk brought many benefits to physical fitness, other residents who hadn’t planned to follow the trend couldn’t resist ordering a few cases.
This milk frenzy lasted a month, until nearly half the market’s inventory at the time was cleared, before easing.
Milk unlike drinking water, had a rich flavor, but unlike liquid food with its currently indescribable stench to everyone, it had a natural subtle sweetness that instantly captured modern people’s taste buds, making it the most popular mass drink.
Orders for desserts using milk as raw material at Yue Xiang Restaurant also surged, and even steamed buns saw dramatic sales increase, because Xiang Chuan had casually said in the live stream room back then, “Breakfast with milk and steamed buns is plenty satisfying.”
And now, Xiang Chuan was making a new milk food—how could this not excite people?
The Animal Husbandry Department employees squeezed to the back of the crowd outside the kitchen heard Xiang Chuan was making a new milk food and got pumped like they’d been injected with chicken blood, craning their necks and standing on tiptoes hoping to see the kitchen scene—not that they didn’t want to push through to the front to watch up close, but their last shred of reason told them: doing that in front of students, teachers, and neighboring department’s Manager Wu would mean no good end after going back.
So, what would be made this time?
