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Devonshire Junket

A sweet milk and cream dessert with curd, sugar, brandy, nutmeg, cinnamon, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Devonshire Junket

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Turn the new milk with a little rennet.

Prepare the toppings

  1. Sweeten the thick cream and add pounded cinnamon, then heat until scalding hot.

  2. When the cream is cold, pour it over the curd.

  3. In the bottom of the dish, add a little wine and sugar.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix the rich cream with pounded loaf sugar, brandy, and nutmeg, then pour over the top when cold.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Rennet turns it into the curd that forms the base of the dish.
Rich cream
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty topping layer.
Thick cream
Adds richness and body to the scalded cream layer.
Rennet
Enzymes coagulate the milk proteins into a soft, set curd.

The step that matters

Turn the new milk with a little rennet.. Rennet only sets milk within a narrow temperature range; if the milk is too hot or too cold, it will not form a clean, tender curd.

“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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