Skip to main content
Dessert

Belicious Junket

A sweet milk pudding made with milk, rennet, sugar, brandy, and served with sugar and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Belicious Junket

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the milk

  1. Warm the milk on the stove to about boiling heat.

  2. Pour the milk into a glass or china bowl.

Set and serve

  1. Stir in the rennet, powdered sugar, and brandy.

  2. Let it stand until cold.

  3. Serve with sugar and rich 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 + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

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

  3. Brandy + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

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

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

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

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

New milk
Forms the body of the junket as the rennet sets it into a soft curd.
Prepared rennet
Enzyme that coagulates the milk protein, turning the liquid into a set custard-like curd.
Powdered loaf sugar
Adds sweetness to the set junket.
Pale brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the junket.

The step that matters

Let it stand until cold without disturbing it. The rennet sets the milk into a delicate curd held together by a fragile protein network. Moving or stirring the bowl while it sets breaks that network, so the junket stays loose or grainy instead of firm and smooth.

“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.

More junket recipes

Devonshire 57Ice Cream 10Coffee 7Custard 7Custard 5Banana 3 See all 44 →

You might also like

Brandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesBrandy CreamBrandy Cream21 recipesBrandy PuddingBrandy Pudding13 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes