Skip to main content
Drink

To Make White Wine Wiiet

A drink made by curdling skimmed milk with wine, nitre, lemon juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Make White Wine Wiiet

Ingredients

Directions

Curdle the milk

  1. Boil the skimmed milk in a pot.

  2. Add the raisin or sherry wine and purified nitre.

  3. Stir in enough lemon juice to curdle the milk.

  4. Boil briefly, then set aside until the curd subsides.

Strain and sweeten

  1. Strain the mixture and add sugar to taste.

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. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Skimmed milk
Its proteins gather into the soft curd once acid is added and the milk is heated.
Raisin or sherry wine
Adds acidity and wine flavour to the curd.
Lemon juice
Its acid makes the milk proteins clump together and separate into curds.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the strained curd.

The step that matters

Stir in enough lemon juice to curdle the milk. Acid causes milk proteins to clump and separate from the whey. Too little lemon juice leaves the milk unset, while too much makes the curd sour and grainy, so add it gradually until the curds form.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, raisin, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, raisin, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Raisin WineRaisin Wine64 recipesLemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesLemon SquashLemon Squash10 recipes