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Dessert

Custard Junket

A milk custard thickened with eggs, sugar, and rennet, set in a dish and optionally topped with nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg 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 ↓

Custard Junket

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk and pour it over the well-beaten eggs.

  2. Return the mixture to the pan and stir until it thickens.

  3. Add the sugar and flavoring, then let it cool slightly.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a glass dish and stir in the rennet.

  2. Let it stand until completely cold and set before serving.

  3. Grate a little nutmeg on top if desired.

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 + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Milk + sugartop 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).

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

Milk
Forms the main liquid base, and its proteins set into a soft curd with rennet.
Eggs
Thicken the custard as they gently heat, adding structure and body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the custard.
Rennet
Enzyme that clots the milk proteins, causing the custard to set firmly.

The step that matters

Cool slightly before adding the rennet. Rennet is an enzyme, and very high heat can weaken or destroy it. Letting the mixture cool slightly before stirring it in helps it clot the milk properly into a set custard.

“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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