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 ↓
Mustard Whey
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the mustard seed in the milk until reduced to ½ pint.
Add enough white wine to turn the mixture into whey.
Strain the mixture and drink it warm at bedtime.
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.
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Milk + white winetop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together929 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).
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Mustard + white winetop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together609 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Mustard + milktop 25% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,658 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Milk
- Forms the base liquid and curdles into whey when wine is added.
- White wine
- Acid causes the milk to curdle, separating curds from the whey.
- Mustard seed
- Infuses a sharp, pungent flavour into the liquid as it simmers.
The step that matters
Adding the white wine. Wine must be added in enough quantity to curdle the milk fully. Too little leaves it unseparated, while adding it too quickly can make the curds form unevenly. Acid from the wine is what causes milk proteins to clump and separate into whey.
Swap the mustard
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, white wine):
- Potatofits better
- Tomatofits better
- Capsicumfits better
- Mustardthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, white wine. 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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