[Sca-cooks] Uses for Whey?

[Terry Decker]

You might examine the chapter on salt in Niels Horrebow's The Natural 
History of Iceland, 1785.  Some naturally occurring salt was collected from 
the shore.  Also, not covered in this text, 18th Century Icelandic salt 
production appears to have used geothermal heat to dry the salt.  According 
to Horrebow, the salt making privilege was granted to some monasteries and 
ecclesiastics, which suggests that there may have been some salt making on 
the island.  What is certain is there wasn't enough salt to preserve meat or 
fish.

"...there's not that much sunlight..." is an error.  Iceland is in the high 
latitudes which means the summer sun shines almost 24 hours a day.  Average 
temperature and humidity are more likely to affect salt making than is the 
sunlight.  And while I haven't researched or experimented with the process, 
I'm wondering whether it might not be possible to use freezing and 
sublimation to extract salt.

You don't actually preserve food in whey.  The whey is a starter for 
fermentation which produces lactic acid that does the pickling.  It's the 
essentially the same process for making kumiss.

There is some out of period evidence of whey preservation at Isny and 
Darmstadt in Germany.  Given the drawbacks of whey fermentation, I would 
expect it to be used in Northern Europe and what I would look for are 
recipes or references to producing sauerkraut with whey.

Bear


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 ****







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