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Drink

Wine Whey

A beverage made by heating milk, adding sherry, cooking until curd separates, straining, sweetening, and serving hot or cold.

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. Heat the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Pour the sherry into the hot milk.

  3. Cook over boiling water for about 5 minutes, or until the curd separates from the whey.

  4. Strain through double cheesecloth.

Finish and serve

  1. Sweeten with sugar.

  2. Serve hot or cold.

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. Sherry + sugartop 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
Provides the protein that forms the curd, which separates from the liquid whey.
Sherry
Its acidity curdles the hot milk, separating the curd from the whey.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the strained whey.

The step that matters

Cook until the curd separates. Heating the milk with the sherry must continue until the curd visibly separates from the whey. Stopping early leaves the milk unset and gives a cloudy, weak whey, while overcooking can toughen the curd.

“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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