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Two-milk Whey

A liquid byproduct obtained by boiling new milk and buttermilk together.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,973 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Two-milk Whey

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. In a pot, combine new milk and buttermilk.

  2. Boil the mixture until a curd forms.

  3. Remove from heat and let it sit by the fire to settle.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain off the whey.

  2. Add sugar if desired.

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. Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Milk + buttermilktop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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
Provides the main liquid and proteins that coagulate into the curd.
Buttermilk
Its acidity helps the milk proteins curdle when heated.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until a curd forms. Boiling the milk and buttermilk together causes the proteins to coagulate and separate from the liquid whey. Heating too little may leave the curd unformed, while the separation depends on the acid from the buttermilk.

“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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