Why it works: Milk and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,399 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Cream of Tartar Whey
Ingredients
Directions
Stir 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar into 1 pint of hot milk.
If the milk does not curdle, add more cream of tartar and stir again.
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.
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 + creamtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together29,399 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Milk
- Provides the liquid that curdles, separating into curds and clear whey when acid is added.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidifies the milk, causing the proteins to coagulate and separate from the whey.
The step that matters
Adding the cream of tartar to the hot milk. Too little acid leaves the milk uncurdled, so the whey does not separate. Adding more acid in small amounts and stirring until the milk curdles gives a clear whey.
“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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