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Wine Whey
½ cup wine Scald milk; add wine; let stand until curds separate from whey. Strain and serve hot or cold. Lemon or Vinegar Whey may be prepared in the same way; allow one tablespoon vinegar or two tablespoons lemon juice.
A sickroom drink rather than a dish, and one of the shortest recipes in the book — so short that the milk quantity has dropped out of the ingredient line entirely. Period versions of wine whey use a pint of milk to a half cup of wine, which is the proportion to work from.
- The missing measurementThe recipe names only the wine. Period recipes for wine whey vary in proportion, but roughly a pint of milk to the half cup of wine is a workable reading; with much less milk you tend to get thin curds rather than clear whey.
- Scald means 180FBring the milk just to the point where bubbles ring the edge of the pan and a skin begins to form, around 180F. A rolling boil scorches the milk sugars and muddies the flavour of the finished whey.
- Add the wine off the heatPour the wine into the hot milk away from the burner and stop stirring. Agitation breaks the curd into fine particles that clog the strainer and cloud the whey.
- Which wineNineteenth-century wine whey usually meant sherry, sometimes madeira or port — fortified and sweetish. A dry table wine will curdle the milk too, but gives a thinner, sharper result.
- Strain properlyA fine sieve leaves the whey hazy. Line it with a double layer of cheesecloth and let it drain without pressing; squeezing forces curd through and defeats the point.
- Alcohol remainsThe wine is never cooked, so much of the alcohol stays in the drink, though some will flash off in the hot milk (the recipe does not actually say to take the pan off the heat). Wine was valued in invalid cookery as a stimulant, but this makes the drink unsuitable for children or anyone avoiding alcohol.
- The lemon and vinegar variantsOne tablespoon of vinegar or two of lemon juice, to whatever quantity of milk you settle on. These give an alcohol-free whey.
Whey drinks belong to the long tradition of invalid cookery, the branch of nineteenth-century household writing devoted to feeding the sick, the weak and the recovering. Milk was thought too heavy for a delicate stomach, so it was split: the curd discarded and the thin, faintly sweet whey given as a restorative, often warm at bedtime. Wine whey in particular was a standard of English and American domestic medicine well before it reached a chocolate company's cook book. Its presence here is a reminder that a cook book of 1907 was still expected to cover nursing as well as entertaining.