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White Wine Whey

A whey product made by curdling milk with sherry, then simmering and skimming the curd.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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White Wine Whey

Why it works: Milk and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,479 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

White Wine Whey

Ingredients

Directions

Curdle the milk

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan over medium heat until nearly boiling.

  2. Add the sherry and simmer for 15 minutes, skimming off the curd as it rises.

  3. Add another tablespoon of sherry and skim for a few more minutes.

Finish

  1. If desired, cool the curd, rub it fine in a mortar, and mix it back with the whey for added nutrition.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Its milk proteins clump together into curd, separating the liquid whey from the solids.
Sherry
Its acidity makes the milk proteins coagulate, so the curd forms and rises to the surface.

The step that matters

Skimming the curd as it rises. The sherry's acid sets the milk proteins into curds that float up. Skimming them as they form removes the solids cleanly, while leaving them in the pan lets them break up and cloud the whey.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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