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Wine Whey

A hot whey curdled from milk, sugar, and sherry, strained and served.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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. In a rinsed saucepan, combine the milk and sugar.

  2. Heat the mixture until it reaches boiling point.

  3. Pour in the sherry and stir.

Strain and serve

  1. Once the milk is well curdled, strain it through clean muslin into a glass.

  2. Serve the whey very hot.

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

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

  3. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 curdle when acid is added, separating into curds and the thin whey served.
Sherry
Its acidity makes the milk proteins clump and separate from the liquid whey.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness to the finished whey.

The step that matters

Let the milk curdle fully before straining. Acid causes milk proteins to coagulate gradually. If the milk is strained before it is well curdled, the proteins stay suspended, leaving the whey cloudy and less 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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