3. You forgot to throw out old dairy products: Believe it or not, curdled milk was offered up as evidence that women were witches
Quite where the idea that witches caused milk to curdle has never been firmly established. However, scholars of the history of witchcraft have found this mentioned in texts dating back to the start of the 16th century. For instance, there was the old English tale of ‘Old Mammy Red or Marblehead’, who could curdle milk as it came out of a cow and could even then magically transform it into blue wool. And like many such superstitions, such a belief was brought across the Atlantic to the Americas by Pilgrim settlers. Before long, America’s witch-hunters were busy looking in people’s pantries, looking out for tell-tale signs of spoiled dairy.
The most notable case of curdled milk being cited as evidence of black magic was at the Salem Witch Trials in 1692. Here, the grand jury heard that several of the accused had spoiled milk in their houses, while neighbors also attested that some of them caused milk to curdle just by walking past it. It must be remembered that this was a time when many families relied on their cows to survive. Should a cow stop producing milk, or should the milk be of poor quality, it could leave a person or family on the brink of destitution and starvation. It would also leave them angry and looking for someone to blame – and often, a ‘strange’ female neighbor was the easiest target.