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Rennet Custard, or Curds and Whey

A custard made by curdling milk with rennet, wine, rose-water, and sugar, served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Rennet Custard, or Curds and Whey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and set

  1. Warm the milk in the serving dish until slightly warm.

  2. Mix the liquid rennet with the wine or the additional rennet and rose-water.

  3. Stir the mixture into the milk gently for half a minute.

  4. Let it stand for at least 30 minutes until set.

Serve

  1. Serve with sugar and cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Milk + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (fenugreek, curry).

  5. Wine + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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
Its proteins form the soft, spoonable set once the rennet acts on them.
Liquid rennet
An enzyme that clots the milk proteins into a custard-like curd.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the set custard, added to taste at serving.

The step that matters

Stirring the rennet into the milk. Stir gently for only half a minute. Vigorous or prolonged stirring breaks up the forming curd and can prevent a smooth, even set, while the rennet still needs to be fully distributed through the milk.

“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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