Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Whey
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the milk in a saucepan.
Add the lemon juice or rennet and stir gently.
Once curds form, strain the mixture through muslin.
Squeeze the curd to extract all the fluid.
Break up the curd with your fingers while pressing to enhance nutrition.
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.
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Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Milk
- Provides the proteins that coagulate into curds, leaving liquid whey behind.
- Lemon juice or rennet
- Acid or enzyme that causes the milk proteins to coagulate into curds.
The step that matters
Add the lemon juice or rennet and stir gently. The acid or rennet makes the milk proteins clump into curds. Stirring gently lets soft curds form, while vigorous stirring can break them up and leave the whey cloudy.
“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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