Why it works: Milk and white wine work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 929 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓
White Wine Whey
Ingredients
Directions
Heat the milk in a saucepan until it boils.
Add the white wine and sugar, stirring until dissolved.
Boil for a few minutes until a light curd forms.
Pour the mixture through a fine sieve to separate the whey from the curd.
Serve the whey hot and discard the curd.
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 + white winetop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together929 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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White wine + sugartop 30% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,586 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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 proteins that separate into curds and whey when acidified and heated.
- White wine
- Its acidity causes the milk proteins to coagulate into a light curd.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness to the whey.
The step that matters
Boil for a few minutes until a light curd forms. Boiling too briefly leaves the milk proteins unset, so the curd stays loose and the whey looks cloudy. Stop once small curds separate clearly, because prolonged boiling can make the curd tough and grainy.
“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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