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Drink

White Wine Whey

A whey beverage made by simmering milk with sherry and straining the curds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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

Ingredients

Directions

Curdle the milk

  1. In a small saucepan, combine the milk and sherry.

  2. Simmer gently until the milk curdles.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  2. Serve the whey hot, discarding the curds.

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
Forms the curds when curdled, and the clear liquid left behind becomes the whey served.
Sherry
Its acidity lowers the milk's pH so it curdles, and it adds a wine flavour to the whey.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the milk curdles. Gentle heat lets the milk curdle into soft, separate curds. Vigorous boiling can scorch the milk on the pan base and toughen the curds, making the whey cloudy and harder to strain cleanly.

“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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