In life, there are words and phrases that everybody knows, but not everyone can define. For those of us who have grown up in the English-speaking world, probably once such example would be the phrase ‘Curds and Whey’.

On hearing the very mention of curds and whey, the image that probably comes to most people’s minds is that of a little girl sitting and eating something under a tree with a spider waiting to pounce.

But what is that something that little Miss Muffet is so heartily enjoying? And for that matter, why is that spider so keen to bother her? 

 

White (liquid) Gold

We are all familiar with milk. This is essentially a white liquid secreted by female mammals to nourish their young. For this reason, it has many nutritional properties, is readily available and is rather tasty. Admittedly, it is neither solid nor a precious metal, but nonetheless, it is certainly very valuable for what it offers us, humans.

This white gold has nevertheless a defect. It is full of bacteria, as you might expect being produced in the stomachs of animals. These bacteria multiply fast causing all sorts of decay and spoiling, and so milk cannot be stored for long.
Over time, people sought solutions to this problem, one of which was using animal stomachs as storage bags (this was pre-fridge freezer days!)

A Fortuitous Discovery

Gradually, something would have been observed by our ancient friends. The bacteria in milk slowly break the sugar down, producing lactic acid, which raises the pH of the solution. At a certain pH, the solid content of the milk begins to separate from the liquid.
Obviously, our ancient friends wouldn’t have understood the biochemical processes involved, but they would have observed the new product.
Something similar would have been seen with regard to the milk stored in animal stomachs. Here the biochemical mechanism is a bit different. It’s all to do with enzymes that would have been present in the walls of the stomach. These are used by the animal to initiate a process like the one mentioned above, which results in the separation of the liquid and solid parts of the milk.

Curds and Whey

This separated substance is what has come to be known as ‘curds and whey’. Curds refers to the solid part and whey to the liquid.

In many cultures, a technique of producing curds and whey has been developed using acid, starter cultures (that is to say a solution containing the bacteria necessary to initiate the curdling process), rennet, which is a name for the enzymes needed to cause milk to curdle, or indeed a combination of these.

Often, that’s all there is to it. Curdle the milk and voila (as any good French cheesemaker might say!) a tasty edible cheese solution.

An example of this is Cottage cheese. This simple cheese is nothing more than this separated milk with some of the whey drained off. Indeed, the name of Cottage cheese probably originates from the fact that this basic cheese was produced as a way of using up any excess milk that people had at their cottages in rural areas.

A Step Further

In many respects, this production of curds and whey is the first step in all cheese production. Once milk has been separated into its curds and whey, there are very many things that can be done to further process this solution (actually in modern methods a gel usually results, which is the solid curd suspended in the liquid whey) and produce a whole host of different products.

The first thing to be done is to drain the whey from the curd. Once the curd/whey gel has been formed it can be broken apart, or cut, using a stick, or in more modern times a special spatula. Disturbing the mixture causes the curd to coagulate together into one big solid, sitting in the whey.

The whey can then be drained off. Some cheeses require heating at this stage. Also, the curd needs to be broken into different sized pieces, depending on the cheese to be produced. The smaller the pieces the easier it is for whey to be drained out. Consequently, for the production of very hard cheeses, the curd needs to be broken (a process called cutting the curd) into very small hazelnut or even rice sized pieces. For softer cheese, the curd can be broken into slightly larger pieces.

This curd can then be folded, moulded and pressed as required to further shape it and extract whey and facilitate the onward cheesemaking process.

The whey itself is not necessarily a by-product to be wasted. In and of itself, the whey can be consumed as a protein filled drink. In modern times, it can be dried to form a solid that can then be sold as a dietary supplement due to all the protein it contains. Something especially useful for bodybuilders who are looking to develop a muscular frame.
It is also possible to produce certain cheeses from the whey such as ricotta.

Finally, cream can be taken from whey to be used as an alternative to cream taken directly from milk, or to be converted into whey butter.

Miss Muffet’s Role

Having seen briefly then what curds and whey are, one important question still remains; what does all this have to do with little Miss Muffet?

The answer to this question is however not clear cut (unlike the curds that she was enjoying!).

At the basic level, it can be seen that nursery rhyme first appeared in print in 1805 in a book entitled ‘Songs for the Nursery’ so it must have existed before that.

These were the days before big scale cheese production, so it wouldn’t have been uncommon for people such as Miss Muffet to eat simple curdled cheese, without too much processing or add-ons.

Obviously, little girls are often afraid of spiders, thus the rhyme makes sense as a little ditty to keep children happy.
Some have sought to find a deeper significance, such as Miss Muffet being Mary Queen of Scots, who during the period of Reformation when there were many tensions between Catholics and Protestants, was frightened by John Knox, a religious reformer.

This is, however, speculation and maybe the best thing to do is to take both the rhyme as well as the curds and whey that it so famously mentions, as something simple to be enjoyed at face value without too much further ado.