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White Wine Whey

A hot beverage made by boiling milk, adding sherry and sugar, then straining the whey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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White 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 ↓

White Wine Whey

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

Curdle the milk

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it boils.

  2. Add the sherry and dissolved sugar.

  3. Boil for a few minutes until a light curd forms.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain through a fine sieve to separate the whey from the curd.

  2. Serve the whey hot and discard 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.

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

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

  3. Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 gather into the curd, which separates out to leave the whey.
Sherry
Its acidity helps the milk proteins curdle, and it adds wine flavour to the whey.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the whey, to taste.

The step that matters

Boil for a few minutes until a light curd forms. Heating with acid makes the milk proteins clump into curds. Too little time leaves the milk unset, and too long can make the curds tough and dry, so watch for a light, loose curd.

“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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