Skip to main content
Drink

Milk Whey, Clarified

A clarified whey made by curdling milk with rennet, removing the curds, adding egg whites and cream of tartar, then boiling and filtering.

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

Why it works: Milk and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,399 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Milk Whey, Clarified

Ingredients

Directions

Curdle the milk

  1. Add enough rennet to the milk to turn it.

  2. Leave the mixture in a warm place.

  3. Press out the whey.

  4. Strain the whey.

Clarify the whey

  1. Add the egg whites and cream of tartar to the whey.

  2. Boil the mixture.

  3. Filter it through paper.

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.

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 + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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 curds and whey that the rennet separates into solid and liquid parts.
Rennet
An enzyme that sets the milk into curds, so the clear whey can be drained off.
Whites of 3 eggs
Coagulate when heated, trapping suspended particles so they can be filtered out of the whey.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture. Heat must be enough to set the egg white proteins fully. Only fully coagulated whites trap the suspended particles, so the filtered whey comes out 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.

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes