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Drink

Oream Tartar Whey

A drink made by curdling warm milk with cream of tartar, straining off the curds, and sweetening the whey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Oream Tartar Whey

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Warm the milk in a saucepan until it is scalding hot.

  2. Stir in the cream of tartar, adding more if necessary until the milk curdles.

  3. Strain the mixture to separate the curds from the whey.

  4. Sweeten the whey with loaf sugar to taste.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

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

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
Its proteins clump into curds when acid is added, leaving the thin whey behind.
Cream of tartar
Its acid lowers the milk's pH, causing the milk proteins to coagulate.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness to the drained whey.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cream of tartar until the milk curdles. The acid must lower the milk's pH enough for its proteins to clump. If too little is added, the milk stays liquid and little curd forms, so the separation fails.

“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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