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Lemon Whey
Heat one cup of milk in a double boiler, add the juice of one lemon, and cook until the curd separates. Strain through cheesecloth, and sweeten with two teaspoonfuls of sugar. Serve hot or cold.
A one-cup invalid drink from the era when whey was considered nourishment for the sick. It comes together in about ten minutes and the only real skill is not letting the milk boil.
- The hinge: gentle heatThe double boiler is not fussiness. Milk held just below a simmer, steaming rather than boiling, tends to give soft flakes of curd that strain away cleanly, where a hard boil can toughen the curd and cloud the whey. The book names no temperature; the double boiler is what keeps it in range.
- YieldOne cup of milk yields somewhat less than a cup of whey once the curd is removed. That is a single small glass, which is what an invalid drink was meant to be. Double or triple the quantities freely.
- Which milkWhole milk gives the most flavorful whey. Ultra-pasteurized milk curdles less predictably and can leave a chalky suspension rather than a clean break; standard pasteurized whole milk behaves best. Skim milk works but the result is thin.
- The lemonOne lemon means roughly 2 to 3 tablespoons of juice, more than enough to break a cup of milk. The recipe has you add it and go on cooking until the curd separates; keep the heat low, stir once, and let it stand a minute rather than stirring continuously.
- StrainingDampen the cheesecloth first so it does not absorb the whey, and use two or three layers. Do not squeeze the curd; pressing forces fine solids through and clouds the drink. Let it drip for two or three minutes.
- Sweetening and servingTwo teaspoons of sugar in this small a quantity may be sweeter than modern taste wants; start with one. Served cold it wants a strip of lemon peel steeped in the hot whey and removed before chilling. Drink it the same day.
- What to do with the curdThe strained curd is essentially fresh lemon cheese. Salted lightly it is edible on toast, which the original book leaves unsaid.
Whey drinks belong to the long tradition of sickroom cookery, when a doctor's instruction to keep a patient on "slops" meant gruels, barley water, beef tea and thin milk preparations. Wine whey, made by breaking milk with sherry, was a common version in nineteenth-century domestic manuals; lemon whey is its temperance cousin, achieving the same curd separation with acid instead of alcohol. The nutritional reasoning behind whey was largely wrong: it is mostly water, lactose and a little protein. It was valued because it was mild, faintly sweet and easy to swallow, which for a feverish patient counted for a good deal.