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Wine Whey

Wine Whey is a beverage made by simmering milk with sherry wine, sugar, and nutmeg, then cooling and straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

Curdle the milk

  1. Heat the new milk in a saucepan over medium heat until nearly boiling.

  2. Add the sherry wine.

  3. Simmer for 15 minutes, skimming off the curd as it rises.

  4. Add more sherry wine.

  5. Skim again for a few minutes.

Make the sweet wine

  1. In a separate pot, heat ½ cup of sweet milk until it boils.

  2. Slowly pour in 1/3 cup of sherry wine mixed with 2 teaspoons of sugar and a little grated nutmeg.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Let cool.

  5. Strain for use.

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

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

  5. Milk + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (fenugreek, curry).

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

New milk
Provides the protein that separates into curds and whey when acid is added.
Sherry wine
Its acidity causes the milk proteins to coagulate, separating curds from the liquid whey.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the sherry.

The step that matters

Adding the sherry wine to the hot milk. The wine must be added while the milk is hot and near boiling so the proteins curdle cleanly. Adding it too fast or to milk that has cooled can leave the curds loose and the whey cloudy, so the separation is incomplete.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

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