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Dessert

Devonshire Junket

A sweet milk custard flavored with vanilla or almond, sweetened, spiced with cinnamon, and served with thick cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,287 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Devonshire Junket

Ingredients

Directions

Make the junket

  1. Heat the milk until lukewarm.

  2. Add sugar to taste and a flavoring of vanilla or almond essence.

  3. Stir in 1 to 2 tablespoons of rum, brandy, sherry, or marsala.

  4. Add 2 teaspoons of rennet and mix well.

  5. Let it stand in a warm place for 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Dust powdered cinnamon over the top.

  2. Pour thick cream over the mixture before serving.

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. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Vanilla + rumtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together728 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Forms the base that rennet curdles into a soft, set custard.
Rennet
Enzyme that coagulates the milk proteins, setting the junket into a soft curd.
Rum, brandy, sherry, or marsala
Adds a warm, aromatic flavor to the dessert.

The step that matters

Adding the rennet. Rennet must be mixed in fully while the milk is only lukewarm. Milk that is too hot can denature the enzyme and stop it from setting, while milk that is too cold sets slowly or not at all.

“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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