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Dessert

Junket

Junket is a chilled milk dessert thickened with rennet wine, sweetened with sugar and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Junket

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the junket

  1. Warm the milk until tepid.

  2. Add the sugar and vanilla, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Stir in the Rennet wine.

  4. Pour into a serving dish and let it stand for 10 minutes.

Set and serve

  1. Place in a cold place until set, about 2 hours.

  2. Serve very cold, with or without additional sugar and 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Wine + vanillatop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together887 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 + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (fenugreek, curry).

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 whose proteins set into a soft, custard-like curd.
Rennet wine
Its enzyme causes the milk to coagulate and set without boiling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the mild, milky flavour.
Vanilla
Adds aroma that rounds out the sweet, milky flavour.

The step that matters

Stir in the rennet at tepid temperature. Rennet is an enzyme that is damaged by high heat. If the milk is too hot when it is added, the enzyme loses its ability to set the milk, so the junket stays runny. Warming only to tepid keeps the enzyme active.

“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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