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
Heat the milk in a saucepan until it reaches boiling point.
Pour in the sherry and stir until the curd separates.
Remove from heat and strain the mixture.
Sweeten with sugar if desired, or use salt if using rennet.
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.
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Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,479 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Milk
- Provides the protein and fat that separate into curds, forming the body of the dish.
- Sherry
- Its acidity causes the milk proteins to coagulate, separating curds from the liquid whey.
The step that matters
Pour in the sherry and stir until the curd separates. The acid must be added to hot milk and stirred gently so proteins clump into curds; if stirred too hard or left unseparated, the curds stay fine and cloudy and the whey tastes less clear.
“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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