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Lemon Whey
Put half a pint of milk into a saucepan. When it boils, pour in a table-spoonful of lemon-juice; add more if this does not effectually turn the milk. Let it boil up, then put it into a bowl to settle; strain and sweeten, and add a little hot water if the whey is too acid to be aggreeable. This whey is excellent for inducing perspiration. Time, a few minutes. Probable cost, 3d. Sufficient for rather less than half a pint of whey.
A sickroom drink rather than a dish, and about as simple as cookery gets: hot milk split with acid, then strained. The only real skill is in getting a clean break.
- The measurementsCassell's half pint is an imperial one, 10 fl oz or about 1 1/4 US cups. The yield of "rather less than half a pint" means you get roughly a large cupful of liquid whey out of it.
- Milk mattersUse whole milk. Skimmed or ultra-pasteurised milk curdles into a fine, cloudy suspension that will not settle or strain cleanly, and the whey stays milky rather than clear.
- The hingeThe recipe adds the juice as the milk boils and then lets it boil up briefly. Keep that boiling short: prolonged hard boiling after souring breaks the curd into fine particles that pass straight through the strainer.
- StrainingA fine sieve leaves flecks behind; a double layer of muslin or a coffee filter gives the clear pale-yellow liquid intended here. Do not press the curds, which clouds the whey.
- Sweetening and dilutionSugar or honey while the whey is still hot so it dissolves. A tablespoon of lemon juice to 10 fl oz of milk can give a sharp result, which is why the recipe offers the "little hot water" if it is too acid.
- The leftover curdThe drained solids are a mild fresh curd cheese, unsalted and rather rubbery from the boiling. Salt it and eat it rather than throwing it out.
- On the medical claimHot sweet liquid taken in bed will make most people sweat; the lemon and the milk have nothing to do with it. Treat the line about perspiration as period medicine, not instruction.
Whey drinks belong to the large Victorian genre of invalid cookery, which occupied whole chapters of household dictionaries because nursing the sick happened at home and the cook was expected to supply the diet. Cassell's gives a family of them — mustard whey, wine whey and other flavoured wheys — all built on the same trick of splitting hot milk with an acid or an alcohol and drinking the thin liquid that separates out. The reasoning was that whey carried nourishment in a form a feverish patient could swallow when milk itself was thought to "disagree", and each flavouring agent was credited with its own action: wine to strengthen, mustard to stimulate, lemon to cool and, as here, to bring on a sweat. The quoted cost of threepence and the tiny yield tell you this was made cup by cup, on demand, for one person upstairs.