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Wine Whey

A whey beverage made by boiling sweet milk, adding sherry, skimming curd, and sweetening to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Wine Whey

Ingredients

Directions

Curdle the milk

  1. Boil the sweet milk.

  2. Add ⅓ cup of sherry and let it simmer for 15 minutes.

  3. Skim off the curd as it forms.

  4. Add another ⅓ cup of sherry and continue to remove curd as it rises.

Strain and sweeten

  1. Strain to remove any remaining curd.

  2. Sweeten to taste 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.

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

Sweet milk
Provides the proteins that clump into curds, which become the whey once separated.
Sherry
Its acidity makes the milk proteins coagulate into curds, and it adds flavour to the whey.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the finished whey, added to taste.

The step that matters

Adding the sherry and skimming the curd. The acid in the sherry causes milk proteins to clump into curds. Skimming the curd as it forms and rises keeps the liquid clear, so the whey is not cloudy or grainy.

“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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