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Dessert

Junket of Milk and Egg

A curdled milk mixture made by adding beaten egg and sugar to warm milk, then curdling with pepsin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Junket of Milk and Egg

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg until frothy.

  2. Sweeten the egg with white sugar.

  3. Add the sweetened egg to the warm milk.

  4. Stir in the essence of pepsin.

  5. Let the mixture stand until it curdles.

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and milk 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
Main liquid whose proteins set into a soft curd once the enzyme acts on them.
Essence of pepsin
Enzyme that breaks down milk proteins so they clump together into curds.
White sugar
Adds sweetness to the egg mixture, balancing the mild, slightly savoury curd.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand until it curdles. Pepsin works best in warm, still milk. Disturbing the mixture while it sets can break up the forming curd, so it should stand undisturbed until firm.

“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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