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
Curdle the milk
Boil the sweet milk.
Add ⅓ cup of sherry and let it simmer for 15 minutes.
Skim off the curd as it rises.
Strain and sweeten
Strain to remove any remaining curd.
Sweeten to taste.
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.
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Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,479 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Sweet milk
- Provides the milk proteins that clump into curds, leaving the clear whey behind.
- Sherry
- Its acidity makes the milk proteins coagulate, and its flavour carries into the whey.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness to the finished whey, adjusted to taste.
The step that matters
Simmering the milk with the sherry. The acid in the sherry must act on the hot milk to make its proteins clump into curds. Simmering gives the curds time to form and separate from the liquid whey, so skimming and straining leave a clear result.
“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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