MIDDLINGS, a term applied to various commercial products which may be regarded as occupying a middle position between two other articles. This idea covers the origin of the term when it is applied to wheaten products. Prior to the middle of the 19th century millers used millstones for grinding wheat, and sought at one operation to obtain as much finished flour and finished by products, e.g., bran, as possible. But they could not by such means avoid making a granular intermediate product, which they called "middlings." This was sold with or without further treatment either for use ultimately as human food or as pigs' food. These alternative purposes are reflected in the present con fusing uses of the term. When modern methods of milling were introduced, and particularly when the machines known as "puri fiers" were first used, millers were enabled to obtain from "middlings" flours of the greatest excellence, so they then sought to make as many as possible. Ultimately they adopted methods
of "gradual reduction" and at an early stage of the milling proc ess are able to granulate the kernel of the wheat berry. (See FLOUR AND FLOUR MANUFACTURE.) These granular products known as semolina (q.v.) middlings and dunst are essentially the same in constitution, differing only as to size of particle. For example, semolinas will pass through a mesh of say 20 per lineal inch, middlings through a mesh of say 56 per lineal inch, and dunst through a mesh of say 88 per lineal inch. Middlings so pro duced are, during the later stages of milling, resolved into finished flour and finished by-products. With recent changes in marketing the term may cease to apply to a by-product of milling.
(A. E. Hu.)