You Probably Can't Guess What The Malt In Your Milkshake Is

A malt contains a combination of ice cream, milk, flavored syrup, and malted milk powder, the last of which is made from sprouted barley that has been heated prior to processing.

It's then added to wheat flour, dried milk, and sometimes other ingredients like sugars and preservatives. It has a rich, sweet, slightly toasted flavor.

When barley grain is soaked in water it begins to germinate. In the malting process, natural enzymes convert the grain's starches into sugars.

To stop the grain from growing into a plant, it's roasted and then mashed. The remaining sugars are what gets added to the dried milk and wheat flour to produce malted milk powder.

First developed in the 1870s as a baby food supplement, the malted milkshake was created in 1927 when a Chicago soda jerk added malt powder to a regular milkshake.