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
Pour ½ pint of milk into a saucepan and add 4 lumps of sugar.
Place the saucepan on the stove and bring to a boil.
Once boiling, pour in ⅓ cup of white wine according to taste.
Move the saucepan to the side of the stove and let it sit for about 1 minute.
Strain the whey into a glass and serve immediately.
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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Sugar + white winetop 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
- Forms the curds and whey when its proteins separate from the liquid.
- White wine
- Its acidity makes the milk proteins clump into curds, leaving clear whey.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the wine.
The step that matters
Pouring in the wine once the milk is boiling. The acid in the wine causes the milk proteins to clump into curds, and the whey separates from them. Adding the wine at the right moment, with the milk hot, helps the curds form clearly so the whey can be strained off clear.
“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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