Lemon Whey
Boil together for five minutes a pint each of milk and water and the juice of two lemons. Strain and add sugar to taste.
LEMON SYRUP (With Lemons) The following recipe makes it possible to have real lemonade at any time. To each pint of lemon juice add one pint of water and two and a half pounds of sugar. Add the grated rind of the lemons used, then place in enamelled kettle and simmer slowly until thick, when it should be strained and bottled (hot).
LEMON SYRUP (Without Lemons) To three pints of water add six pounds of sugar and boil five minutes. Into this stir the white of one egg beaten up with half a pint of cold water. When a scum rises (as it will in a few moments) set the kettle off the fire and let stand five minutes, when the scum must be removed.
When cool measure and to a gallon of syrup add-three ounces of tartaric acid dissolved in half a pint of hot water. With this add one teaspoonful of oil of lemon. The latter must be absolutely sweet and fresh; if the least rancid the syrup will be spoiled.
Three separate preparations run together under one heading: a curdled milk drink for invalids, and two lemon syrups — one made from fruit, one from acid and flavouring oil. Read them as three recipes, not one.
- Lemon whey is meant to curdleThe point of boiling milk with lemon juice is to split it. What you strain off is the thin, greenish whey; the curds are discarded. It was served warm or cold, sweetened, to the sick.
- Don't over-boil the wheyFive minutes is ample and the mixture will separate quickly once the acid goes in. Prolonged boiling gives a cooked flavour; strain through a fine sieve or cloth once the curd has set firmly.
- Yields for the fruit syrupA pint of lemon juice takes roughly 10 to 16 lemons. With a pint of water and 2 1/2 lb sugar, expect somewhere around a quart of finished syrup after reduction.
- "Enamelled kettle" means non-reactiveEnamelware was specified because bare copper, iron and tin discolour and taint acidic fruit. Stainless steel or an enamelled Dutch oven does the same job.
- Simmer gently, and watch the thickening"Until thick" is left to the eye; the book gives no temperature. Pushed further the sugar begins to caramelise and the fresh lemon flavour is lost; the grated rind can also turn bitter with long cooking, so keep the heat low.
- Bottling hot is not canningFilling hot bottles and capping gives a partial seal but no processed guarantee. Treat both syrups as refrigerator keepers, or process properly in a water bath using current instructions.
- Tartaric acid and oil of lemonBoth are still sold — tartaric acid from winemaking or specialist suppliers, oil of lemon as a food-grade essential oil. Three ounces of acid to a gallon of syrup gives a strong sour. Buy oil of lemon in a small bottle and keep it cold; citrus oils oxidise fast, which is exactly the rancidity the author warns about.
- The egg white is a clarifierBeaten white stirred into hot syrup coagulates and carries impurities to the surface as scum, which is skimmed. It is cooked and removed, not consumed; the syrup will be clear rather than cloudy.
- Add the acid off the heatThe instruction to cool the syrup before adding dissolved tartaric acid matters. Acid in boiling sugar syrup inverts it and can thin the finished product, and the volatile lemon oil will simply evaporate if stirred into anything hot.
Whey drinks were a fixture of nineteenth-century sickroom cookery, sitting alongside beef tea, barley water and gruel in the chapter every household manual devoted to invalid feeding: thin, mildly nourishing, easy on a stomach that would not take milk itself. Lemon whey is the acid-set version of the same idea — wine whey and vinegar whey appear in the same lists. The two syrups belong to a different tradition, the domestic soda fountain. Bottled lemon syrup let a household produce lemonade in winter, when fresh lemons were expensive or unobtainable, and the second recipe dispenses with fruit altogether: tartaric acid supplies the sourness and a teaspoonful of expressed lemon-peel oil supplies the smell. Commercial soft drinks of the period were built on precisely that combination of sugar, food acid and flavouring oil, and recipes like this one brought the formula into the kitchen.