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To Prepare Rennet

Rennet is prepared by soaking dried rennet in wine and water, then using it to curdle milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,116 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells fenugreek, curry. The science ↓

To Prepare Rennet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rennet

  1. Wash the dried rennet in lukewarm water without scraping it.

  2. Cut the rennet into small pieces and place them in a bottle.

  3. Pour 1 quart of Lisbon wine over the rennet pieces.

  4. Let it sit for a week.

Use the rennet

  1. To use, take 1 tablespoon of the wine to curdle 1 quart of milk.

  2. Alternatively, hang the rennet in a cool, dry place for preservation.

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. Wine + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (fenugreek, curry).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Dried rennet
Provides enzymes that curdle milk proteins into a soft set curd.
Lisbon wine
Acts as the liquid that draws the rennet's enzymes out during the week of soaking.
Milk
Its proteins coagulate into curds when the rennet-wine liquid is added.

The step that matters

Let it sit for a week. The enzymes need time to leach out of the rennet into the wine. Using it too early gives a weaker extract, so the milk may curdle slowly or incompletely.

“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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