[Sca-cooks] Uses for Whey?

[Stefan li Rous]

Bear suggested:
<<< Whey pickling is also period.  It uses roughly 1/4 cup of whey to 1 cup 
water with 1 to 3 teaspoons of salt.  Sterilize the equipment and boil the 
water before use, but cool it to lukewarm so that it doesn't kill the 
lactobacilli in the whey.  Close the container tightly, lactobacilli 
fermentation is an anaerobic process.  Keep the container cool (in period it 
would be in a springhouse or cellar), remembering this is a Northern 
European pickling process.  Root vegetables and cabbages work best in this 
process. >>>

Okay, but no salt added in Iceland. The whole idea of using whey for preservation was because they didn’t have the salt for this use. Yes, an island surrounded by sea, doesn’t have salt. What little wood they had was too precious to burn to evaporate sea water and there’s not that much sunlight there to use that to evaporate the sea water, unlike in southern France.

They also stored large amounts of butter, which got rather “ripe” by most people’s standards. So it may also be that the Icelandic preservation of meat with whey might take the meat a bit past what modern folks are willing to eat.

Other than Iceland, where do we have period evidence of preservation of foods in whey?

fd-Iceland-msg (96K) 1/ 6/11 Food of medieval Iceland. Recipes.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-BY-REGION/fd-Iceland-msg.html

It looks like ricotta may not be the only cheese made from whey.
whey-cheeses-msg (32K) 6/ 1/06 Cheeses such as ricotta made from the liquid left after making other cheeses.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-DAIRY/whey-cheeses-msg.html

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
   Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          StefanliRous at gmail.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/marksharris
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****