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Vinegar Whey

A whey made by curdling boiling milk with vinegar and flavored with currant jelly, tamarinds, or damsons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and red currant work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 188 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Vinegar Whey

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Curdle the boiling milk by adding the vinegar.

  2. Stir in the currant jelly, preserved tamarinds, or damsons.

  3. Strain off the whey from the curd.

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. Vinegar + red curranttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together188 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Red currant + tamarindtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Milk + red curranttop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together193 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Milk + tamarindtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Vinegar + tamarindtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the curd when acid is added, and provides the liquid that becomes the whey.
Vinegar
Acid that curdles the hot milk, separating curds from the liquid whey.
Black or red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity tartness to the whey.
Preserved tamarinds
Adds sourness and fruity flavour to the whey.
Damsons
Adds tart fruit flavour to the whey.

The step that matters

Curdle the boiling milk by adding the vinegar. The milk must be boiling hot when the vinegar goes in. Heat and acid together cause the milk proteins to clump into curds, and separating them cleanly from the whey depends on that clumping being complete.

Swap the tamarind

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, vinegar, red currant):

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Currantfits better
  4. Tamarindthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, vinegar, red currant. 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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