Whey

“ We next draw the whey down to the curd—leaving enough to stir it in easily, and cool the whole mass down to 90 degrees, to avoid too much packing, and draw off the balance of the whey. The whey should be run off before the acid develops, because acid, formed from the milk in the sugar, dissolves the minerals and cuts some of the oils in the curd, and these run off in the whey. Many curds, by remaining in the whey too long, become whey-soaked, and make cheese that is soggy and hard, with a sour flavor. ”

“ Thus it is very plainly to be seen that whey is poor stuff to feed, even in its best estate. It has some value to mix with other foods, if used sweet; but when the sugar has all turned to acid, and the phosphates have become lactates, leaving the phosphoric acid free, the whey is abominable, and can be used only in small quantities and with great care. It ought not to be fed to young animals with tender stomachs, and does older animals no good. ”

“ Scalding Whey is prepared by a simple expedient, adopted in the midland counties, for improving the quality of Whey Butter. It consists in suspending each meal of cream, as it is taken off the whey, over the fire, till it become scalding hot; care being taken that it may not boil. Thus, the butter is greatly improved; and, if the milk have become rancid or bitter, from the cows having eaten turnips, or barley-straw, such disagreeable taste will be completely removed. ”

“ Strain your Whey, and set it on the fire: make a clear and gentle fire under the kettle: as they rise, put in whey, so continuing, till they are ready to skim. Then take your skimmer, and put them on the bottom of a hair-sieve: so let them drain till they are cold. Then take them off, and put them into a bason, and beat them with three or four spoonfuls of Cream and Sugar. ”

“ When the milk is congealed and perfectly solid draw through it backward and forward an ordinary four-tined silver fork; this will separate the curd. Strain through two thicknesses of cheese-cloth, saving the whey as this is the part you are to use; add a pint of water, a half ounce of sugar of milk, three ounces of cream and four ounces of the white of egg. The whites may be dropped into a quart fruit jar, a pint of the whey added, the top screwed on and the jar thoroughly shaken until the whites are well mixed with the whey ”

“ Do not let it get too hot, or the cheese will be hard and tasteless. When the whey has risen, pour [Pg 442] both into a strainer-cloth or bag; tie it at the top, and hang it up to drain. If prepared for draining in the morning, by the middle of the afternoon it will be sufficiently free from whey. Then turn it out of the strainer and crumble all up fine; throw in a little salt and black pepper, rub in a table-spoonful of butter, and moisten with milk till soft enough to make into small pats or rolls for tea. If you have cream to wet it up with, use no butter. ”

“ Insert the perpendicular knife also in hot water and with it cut the curd first crosswise, then lengthwise, then crosswise again, being sure to lap over the course of each cut. The curd is now in small cubes that are fast discharging whey from their severed cellular system. They gravitate toward the bottom of the vat. If the curd has been cleft by the blades, gently and with great care, the rising whey has a clear, greenish cast, attesting that it is freed from most of the albuminous substances of the milk and will render a good ratio to the patrons. ”

“ Then it must be hastily drawn and hastily salted, with the whey not all out of it; too often the acid is in advance of the maker’s expectations. Cheese made in this way from day to day cannot help but be uneven in flavor, in salt and in acid. “Salting in the whey,” as it is called, without a mill is wasteful, too. As the whey flows off, the constant tendency of the curd is to pack, and hand manipulation to prevent this will start white whey, the life blood of the cheese, in wasteful quantities. ”

“ Also, make it a rule to yard nobody's pigs or calves about the premises for convenient whey slopping. Insist on it that if your patrons insist on drawing sour whey home in their milk cans they put on extra "elbow grease" afterward in cleansing them. A cheese maker hardly likes to make the imputation to patrons that their wives are not neat (only, perhaps, when they are in a great hurry) about scalding out the sour whey from milk cans, and yet such insinuations on his part are often necessary. ”

“ Colour the mixture by adding a little vermillion, lamp black or prussian blue; be careful not to ignite the compound while dipping.
35. FIRE AND WATER-PROOF CEMENT To half a pint of milk add half a pint of vinegar to curdle it; then separate the curd from the whey, and mix the whey with 4 or 5 eggs; beating the whole well together; when it is well mixed, add a little quick-lime through a sieve, until it has acquired the consistence of a thick paste. ”

“ The sugar accumulates in the system as fat, while the hog is slowly perishing of inanition. But if it is thus cruel to feed it alone to full grown animals, it is doubly so to feed it to young and growing animals—as pigs and calves—the necessities of the lives of which demand tissue-making material as well as life-sustaining. If whey is used, let it be fed sweet, and always with some kind of dry nitrogenous food, as bean meal, oil meal, pea meal, clover, etc. But, with the acid system of cheese-making, it is impossible to do this. The whey is decomposed before run into the whey-vat. ”

“ The treatment of whey in cheese factory practice is especially important since the warm whey must be stored for a number of hours before it is returned to the farms. Even under the best of conditions the whey is certain to be in an advanced state of fermentation when placed in the milk cans, and it only needs the infection of the whey tank with harmful bacteria to cause great loss on account of the injury of the product by these bacteria. ”

“ In cold and rainy weather they should be kept in their styes; and during the heat of summer their drink should be slightly nitrated, acidulated, or salted. Whey is an excellent thing for those that are weakly. ”

“ This Whey, or that water which is plentifully gathered in the making the Cow-milk Cheeses, though it affords varieties of Profit to mankind, whether they give it their Hogs to fatten them, or use it themselves for their daily drink, especially in Summer time, or apply it to other uses as we see daily done, yet do not I see any better benefit than that which it yields to the Curriers. ”

“ The clearest whey will always be obtained by cutting early. The whey exudes from the curd much more freely when it is yet young and tender—and the only object in cutting the curd at all is to get out the whey. When cutting is begun, let it be continued as expeditiously as possible until it is finished. Do not stop and let the curd stand and toughen. It cuts more easily, with less friction and less waste by loosening fine particles of curd, when it is tender and parts easily before the knife. ”

“ All yeasts grow best in an acid medium, hence those fermenting milk sugar find suitable conditions for growth in sour milk or whey. They may at times become of economic importance in the cheese industry, because of the contamination of the milk with large numbers of [Pg 97] them. The arrangement of the whey vat is often such that it cannot be completely emptied and cleaned; the sour whey thus presents favorable conditions for the growth of the lactose-fermenting yeasts. ”

“ Some feed their calves reared for stock partly with meal mixed in the milk after the third or fourth week. Others introduce gradually some new whey among the milk, first mixed with meal; and, when the calf gets older, they withdraw the milk, and feed it on whey and porridge. Hay-tea, juices of peas and beans, or pea or bean straw, linseed beaten into powder, treacle, &c., have all been sometimes used to advantage in feeding calves; but milk, when it can be spared, is by far their most natural food. ”

“ Milk, the most natural and the commonest food of man, is a mixture of three component parts, whey, butter, and cheese. The caseous part is viscous; the butter is the fat, oily, and inflammable part, and properly speaking, is not perfectly dissolved in the serum or whey, but rather only diffused through it like an emulsion, so that it may be separated by rest alone, without any artificial preparation. ”

“ If, through unusually good quality of milk, it does not come to the front, coax it a little in the following way: After the curd is cooked and before whey is drawn, turn on steam and re-warm the whole mass, then draw the whey and pack the curd in bulk as much as possible, covering it up with a cloth. This will soon set the acid to working in good shape. Always rely on the hot iron test to locate acid. It takes an expert to get the amount of acid even from mess to mess by an olfactory measurement. ”

“ The more the curd is heated in the whey the drier will be the cheese. Often it is improved by allowing the curd to become rather dry and then working new milk or a little cream into it, according to the use to which it is to be put—whether it is for bakers’ stock or for the table. ”

“ We notice that, in some localities, the patrons of the cheese factory are very much interested in the question of the value of whey for feeding purposes—some going so far as to assert that what is left of milk in cheese making is as valuable as what is removed! ”

“ The most intelligent dairymen with whom we are acquainted do not consider sour whey worth drawing home. It is cruel to feed sweet whey to any animal exclusively. Even a hog, which has made its growth—and no animal can more fully extract the nutri [110] health while actually growing fat on sweet whey. The portion of less than one per cent. of albuminous matter prolongs, rather than sustains life. That is to say, the hog will not starve to death quite so quick if fed whey as it will without it. ”

“ It must not be heated, as the oily parts will then pass off, and the richness is lost. When fully turned, put in a coarse linen bag, and hang it to drain several hours, till all the whey is out. Then mash it fine, salt it to the taste, and thin it with good cream, or add but little cream, and roll it into balls. When thin, it is very fine with preserves or sugared fruit.
It also makes a fine pudding, by thinning it with milk, and adding eggs and sugar, and spice to the taste, and baking it. Many persons use milk when turned to bonny-clabber for a dessert, putting on sugar and spice. ”

“ After removing the whey, a new acid makes its appearance in the body of the curd, which seems to depend for its development upon the action of the air, and the presence of which experience has shown to be an essential element in the making of a cheese. ”

“ Before putting them the last time into the vat, pare the edges if they do not look smooth. The vat should have holes at the sides, and at the bottom, to let all the whey pass through. Put on clean boards, and change and scald them. When cheese is made, care must be taken to preserve it sound and good. For this purpose wash it occasionally in warm whey, wipe it once a month, and keep it on a rack. If wanted to ripen soon, a damp cellar will bring it forward. When a whole cheese is cut, the inside of the larger quantity should be spread with butter, and the outside wiped, to preserve it. ”

“ Some good Dairy-women, I think often err in the manner of breaking their Curd; tho’ they make good Cheese, they might make better and more of it, if they did not squeeze out so much of the fat in breaking; the Whey that first runs from the Curd is always the thinnest, and was that thin part first separated, before the Curd was much broke, it would certainly leave the Cream in the Cheese, which would but little of it squeeze out in putting in the Vat, but when it is broke so very small amongst the Whey the rich parts are squeezed amongst the thin Whey and carried away with it. ”

“ In those rare cases where milk cannot be taken by a child, often barley-water, mixed in equal quantities with the milk, will make it agree, by lessening and softening the curd; sometimes the whey of the milk, separated from the curd by rennet, and made richer by adding 1 part cream, which contains no curd, to 4 of the whey, makes a digestible food. Sometimes it is necessary to feed for a day or two on rice water, with the boiled rice pounded and mixed in it ”

“ Baste them with butter, and strew them with bread crumbs while roasting. Ten or twelve minutes will do them. Serve them up with fried bread crumbs in the dish, and gravy in a tureen.
WHEY. Cheese whey is a very [481] wholesome drink for weakly persons, especially when the cows are in fresh pasture. Tending to quench thirst, and to promote sleep, it is well adapted to feverish constitutions. It is the most relaxing and diluting of all drinks, dissolving and carrying off the salts, and is a powerful remedy in the hot scurvy. ”

“ When the whey comes through the cloth, you can dip it off with a saucer, then put a thin towel in the cheese vat, put in the curd, spread the cloth over the top, put on the lid, and press it moderately about half an hour; then put it back in the tub and salt it to your taste; mix it well, and if you want it very rich put in a quarter of a pound of butter; it is always better to skim the night's milk and put in butter, as the cream is apt to press out. ”

“ Boil half a pint of milk with two ounces of castor sugar. Drain away the whey and beat the curd in a basin with three large eggs and an ounce of butter. Put some currants in each patty pan and a spoonful of the mixture on the top; bake twenty minutes in a good oven. The whey can be used to flavour custards.
Roast Bullock’s Heart.—Well wash the heart in warm water and salt. Cut away the pipes and trim away most of the fat; cut the thick wall that divides the middle of the heart. Put the heart in a saucepan of cold water, bring this slowly to the boil and throw the water away ”