Why it works: Milk and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Wine Whey
Ingredients
Directions
Heat the milk in a saucepan until it boils.
Pour in enough wine to curdle the milk and clarify it.
Boil the mixture and then set it aside until the curd settles.
Carefully pour off the whey without stirring.
Add the boiling water and sweeten with loaf sugar to taste.
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 + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + winetop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,116 recipes
Shared aroma: sotolon (fenugreek, curry).
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Wine + sugartop 31% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together9,581 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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
- Its proteins gather into curds that separate out, leaving clear whey behind.
- Wine
- Its acidity makes the milk proteins clump together so they can be separated.
- Loaf sugar
- Sweetens the finished whey to the cook's taste.
The step that matters
Pour off the whey without stirring. Stirring breaks up the settled curd and mixes it back into the liquid, leaving the whey cloudy instead of clear.
“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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