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Wine Whey

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

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. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Once boiling, add the sherry wine.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve to collect only the whey.

Finish 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 + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (fenugreek, curry).

  5. Wine + nutmegtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Provides the liquid base that separates into curds and whey when heated with wine.
Sherry wine
Its acidity curdles the boiling milk, separating the clear whey from the solids.

The step that matters

Adding the sherry to boiling milk. The wine's acid must be added once the milk is boiling so it curdles the proteins cleanly. Adding it too early or to cool milk gives weak separation and cloudy whey.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sherry, wine. 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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