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Wine Whey

A whey beverage made by boiling milk, adding wine, straining, sweetening, and topping with nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Wine Whey

Ingredients

Directions

Make the whey

  1. Boil ½ pint of milk.

  2. While boiling, add ⅓ cup of Madeira or sherry wine.

  3. Strain the mixture through muslin or a sieve to separate the curd.

Sweeten and serve

  1. Sweeten the whey to taste.

  2. Grate a little nutmeg on top before serving.

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).

  2. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sherry + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,246 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 clot into curds, leaving the liquid whey behind.
Madeira or sherry wine
Its acidity makes the milk proteins clot, separating curds from whey, and adds flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the whey so it tastes pleasantly sweet.

The step that matters

Adding the wine while the milk boils. The acid in the wine must be stirred into the hot milk so the milk proteins clot into curds. If the wine is not mixed in well, the milk may stay liquid or separate unevenly, leaving the whey cloudy with fine curd.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sherry, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sherry, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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