What is whey, then, but sweetened water, using sugar of a very low
sweetening quality, with a fraction of albuminous matter and ash in
it? Again, by the so-called "sweet" process, which retains all, or
nearly all, the phosphates in the cheese, the whey is made still poorer
by analysis. Only the sugar and a fraction of the albuminous matter,
not coagulated by rennet, is left in the whey; and the amount of sugar
in milk varies considerably, ranging, in a large number of German
analyses, from 3.0 to 5.48 per cent. of sugar. But let us more closely
examine the composition of whey. An average of eighteen analyses made
by Voelcker is as follows:
Water 93.02
Nitrogenous matter .96
Fat .33
Ash .70
Sugar } 4.99
Lactic acid }
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Total 100.00