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White Wine Whey

A whey made by curdling milk with sour raisin wine and sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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White Wine Whey

Why it works: Raisin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

White Wine Whey

Ingredients

Directions

Curdle the milk

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

  2. Pour in enough sour raisin wine to curdle the milk completely.

  3. Let it boil briefly, then remove from heat and allow the curd to settle without stirring.

Finish the whey

  1. Pour off the whey and add ½ pint of boiling water.

  2. Sweeten with a bit of white 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.

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. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

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

  4. Milk + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (fenugreek, curry).

  5. Raisin + winetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,324 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

New milk
Its proteins set into curds when acid is added, forming the body of the dish.
Raisin wine
Its acidity curdles the milk, separating curds from the liquid whey.
White sugar
Adds sweetness to the finished whey, adjusted to taste.

The step that matters

Let the curd settle without stirring. Stirring breaks up the curds before they firm, so they stay cloudy and mix back into the whey. Letting them settle undisturbed lets the curds clump and separate cleanly, leaving a clearer whey to pour off.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, wine, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, wine, sugar. 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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