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White Wine Whey

A whey product made by curdling milk with white wine, then adding boiling water and 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: 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

Make the curd

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

  2. Pour in enough white wine to curdle the milk until it looks clear.

  3. Let it boil briefly.

  4. Remove from heat and let the curd settle without stirring.

Make the whey

  1. Pour off the whey.

  2. Add ½ pint of boiling water and 1 tablespoon of white sugar to the whey.

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 + white winetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together929 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

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

  3. White wine + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

New milk
Provides the protein that the wine curdles into curd, leaving clear whey behind.
White wine
Its acidity causes the milk proteins to coagulate, separating curds from the liquid whey.
White sugar
Adds sweetness to the finished whey.

The step that matters

Adding the wine. Too little wine leaves the milk unset, while too much can make the whey taste sharp. Adding wine gradually until the milk looks clear lets the curds separate fully, since acid is what triggers the milk proteins to clump.

“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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