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The consumption of dairy products, made from the milk of cows, sheep, goats and buffalo, among other mammalian species, is almost as old as human civilization, with evidence of these products stretching back many millenia. The production of different kinds of dairy products originated as different ways to preserve the valuable nutritional goodness of milk components (lactose, fat, protein, vitamins and minerals) and make the milk safe for consumption, using basic principles like fermentation, heating, separation, dehydration, acidification, smoking and salting, which are the keys to producing products like cheese, butter and yogurt. Many dairy products today are still produced using the same basic principles, and in this book an introduction to the origins, constituents and properties of milk is given, alongside an outline of the ways in which dairy products are made including the development of advanced products like infant formula and formulated nutritional products. The text introduces, at an introductory level, the chemistry and microbiology of milk, as well as the principles of the main processes used like spray-drying, fermentation and pasteurization, to underpin understanding of how the properties of the main dairy products emerge. The book, which finishes with a discussion of the challenges and threats facing dairy today, is designed to be accessible to a wide range of non-specialist readers who may have an interest in milk and dairy products and want to learn more about this fascinating and ancient branch of the science of food.

A reassessment of the rivalry between the two great Anglo-Norman magnate families in late medieval and early modern Ireland, putting forward a new interpretation of events.The Fitzgerald Earls of Kildare and the Butler Earls of Ormond were the foremost old colonial magnates in the late medieval Lordship of Ireland. Rivals for power and influence throughout the island but in particular for the post of chief governor, the principal representative of the English crown in Ireland, their struggle for mastery expressed itself in multiple ways ranging from competition for cultural hegemony to outright military confrontation. This book, based on extensive original research including hitherto unexplored evidence from literary sources and material culture, serves to counterbalance the anti-Kildare impression given by official documents such as the State Papers, which stressed that the objective of a military conquest of Gaelic Ireland was paramount. Instead, the book argues that the Kildare-Ormond rivalry was a more subtle and sophisticated conflict between two different concepts of what Ireland should be, the frequently dominant Fitzgeralds promoting the idea of Ireland as an integrated polity with the recognition and co-option of leading figures in Gaelic Ireland, the opposing Butlers embodying the traditional Cambro-Norman ideas of conquest. However, it is further argued that these opposing positions were not fundamental but conditional, dependent upon which great house held the chief governorship. The book elaborates on these alternating concepts of Ireland, showing how the political war between the two magnate families, and the accompanying culture war, played out over time.