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 ↓
White-Wine Whey
Ingredients
Directions
Curdle the milk
Put the milk and sugar in a saucepan.
Heat the saucepan on the stove until it boils.
Once boiling, pour in the wine.
Move the saucepan to the side of the heat and let it stand for 1 minute.
Strain
Strain the whey into a glass.
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.
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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Sugar + winetop 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
- Provides the proteins that separate into curds, leaving the clear whey to strain off.
- Wine
- Its acidity makes the milk proteins clump together, so the curds separate from the whey.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness to the whey.
The step that matters
Once boiling, pour in the wine.. The wine's acid must be added to hot, boiling milk so the proteins curdle quickly and separate cleanly. Adding it too early or too cold can leave the milk partly curdled and 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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