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Dessert

Coffee Junket

A milk-based dessert made with coffee, sugar, and a junket tablet, served chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and coffee are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Coffee Junket

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Crush and dissolve the junket tablet in 1 tablespoon of cold water.

  2. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  3. Add the sugar and coffee to the heated milk.

Set

  1. Remove from heat and let it cool until lukewarm.

  2. Stir in the dissolved junket tablet.

Serve

  1. Serve with 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. Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Milk + junkettop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together103 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 base that the junket enzyme sets into a soft, creamy curd.
Junket tablet
Contains rennet, an enzyme that causes the milk to coagulate and set.
Coffee
Provides the main flavour and aroma of the dish.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the coffee's bitterness.

The step that matters

Stir in the junket at lukewarm, not hot. Rennet is an enzyme that high heat can denature, so adding the tablet to hot milk may stop the milk from setting. Cooling to lukewarm keeps the enzyme active so the milk sets into a smooth curd.

“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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