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Dessert

Junket Custard

A gelatin dessert made with milk, sugar, junket tablet, water, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Junket Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk until lukewarm.

  2. Add the sugar and vanilla extract; stir until the sugar is dissolved.

  3. Dissolve the junket tablet in the cold water and add it to the milk mixture.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into small molds and let it stand in a cool place until firm.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + junkettop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together82 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Junket + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together49 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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 body of the custard and provides the liquid that sets.
Junket tablet
Contains rennet, which causes the milk proteins to coagulate into a soft set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the mild flavour of the milk.

The step that matters

Adding the junket tablet. Rennet works best when the milk is only lukewarm; if it is too hot, the enzyme is damaged and the custard may fail to set. Dissolving the tablet fully in water first ensures it spreads evenly 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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