SC - whey preserved foods (long)

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

Stefan wrote:

>This sounds like it works on the same principle as storing things in
>honey - keeping air and microbes away for the food. But doesn't the
>whey itself go bad? Is this whey generally from goat's, sheep or cow's
>milk? What other foods were stored this way?

It is more like pickling, actually; the term used for fermented whey in
Icelandic, "sýra", actually means "acid" and today, vinegar is sometimes
used, even though the results are not as good.

The following are two loosely translated sections from my book, the section
on "súrmatur", literally "sour food", i.e. food preserved in whey, and the
section on "sýra" (fermented whey). There is some overlapping of the texts.
Any text in parantheses is not in the original; I´ve added it to explain
things an Icelander doesn´t need explained. I´ve removed the accent from the
y in sýra as it may not show up on your screen correctly.


"Pickling was one of the most used preservation methods in Iceland almost
from the Settlement, as salt was always lacking, and the liquid used for
pickling was fermented whey. Icelanders were by no means the only ones who
preserved their food by pickling but long-term preservation in whey is not
known to have been widely practised elsewhere. Whey accumulated as a
by-product of skyr-making during the summer (skyr: curds, made from ewes or
cows milk, a mainstay of Icelandic diet through the centuries) and was kept
in barrels, where a fermentation process began. It was then called syra.
Syra was either diluted with water and drunk, or used for the preservation
of food. Many kinds of food were preserved in this manner, such as blood
sausage, liver sausage, lundabaggar (a kind of Icelandic version of
faggots), sheep´s heads, lamb´s testicles, fatty meat, whale meat and
blubber, seal flippers and many other things. Dried or hard stuff, otherwise
quite inedible, for example bones and dried fish skin, were sometimes kept
for a long time in syra, until they softened. Food keeps very well in a
strong syra and loses relatively little of its nourishment value, but this
method has a great effect on the taste of the food. If a barrel was to be
kept undisturbed for many months, some mutton fat was usually rendered and
poured over the surface to seal it, but if the barrel was in constant use,
it was simply closed with a wooden lid. If the surface wasn´t either sealed
or disturbed daily, a mold might start to grow."

And from the chapter on sýra:

"Syra, i.e. fermented whey, was the most common beverage of Icelanders for
many centuries and can in effect be said to have replaced ale, as lack of
grain prevented us from brewing much ale. The whey was poured into huge
barrels in the larder. These barrels were sometimes almost completely dug
into the floor, as was the case with the syra-barrel Earl Gissur hid in when
the farmhouse at Flugumýri was burned down (a famous and well-documented
incident from 13th century Icelandic history. The barrel was almost full of
ice-cold syra and there was another one on top of it, with a small space in
between. The earl (the only Icelandic nobleman ever) hid in the bottom
barrel while his enemies searched the burning farmhouse). There are also
several similarities between the making of syra and ale-brewing, and the
blanket that developed on the surface of a sýra barrel was called jastur,
which is the same word as yeast in English. Syra was used for a lot of
things besides drinking and preservation, for example to marinate food, and
according to Íslenskir þjóðhættir (a 19th century book on folk customs and
more), better-off farmers frequently "let the meat lie in syra for a day or
two, before it was roasted, especially when a large feast was held". Bones
were also put in syra to soften them up and make them edible. It is said
that syra isn´t really mature until it is two years old. Then it was never
drunk undiluted, but mixed with water. Syra that was diluted by 11 parts of
water was called tólftarblanda (twelve-blend)."

>Does this storage technique only work in a cool climate, which I assume
>Iceland has even in summer? Or would it work in warmer regions such as
>the Mediteranean? Does anyone else have any evidence of this preservation
>technique being used elsewhere besides Iceland?


Don´t think so. Our top food historian says she has frequently asked
collegues from around the world if they know of this technique in other
cultures and no one has ever heard of it. - I´m not sure if this would work
in a warmer climate, maybe if the barrel was kept deep down in a cold
cellar. In summer, when I was a child, the syra was icy cold, never mind how
hot it was (not that it ever got very hot but it was the only cold drink
available before refrigeration).

Nanna


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