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Dessert

Rennet Custard

A custard made by curdling warm milk with rennet, flavored with wine, sugar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,685 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Rennet Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rennet

  1. If using pickled rennet, wash it well to remove salt.

  2. Soak the rennet in lukewarm water for 12 hours.

Make the curd

  1. Pour the water into a quart of warm milk and cover it.

  2. Keep the mixture warm until the curd and whey separate.

  3. Pour off the whey; it can be given to a sick person.

Set and serve

  1. Place the curd in custard cups, adding wine and sugar, and grate nutmeg on top.

  2. If using rennet wine, heat the milk to boiling, then slowly pour in the wine until curd separates.

  3. Chill the curd, adding wine, sugar, and nutmeg just before serving.

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 + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Milk + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (fenugreek, curry).

  4. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Wine + nutmegtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Rennet
Enzyme that sets the warm milk into curd, separating it from the whey.
Milk
Protein base that coagulates into the soft curd forming the custard.
Wine
Adds flavour and aroma to the curd.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the curd.
Nutmeg
Adds warm aromatic flavour on top of the curd.

The step that matters

Keep the mixture warm until the curd and whey separate. Rennet's enzyme sets milk proteins into curd only within a moderate warm range. Too cold and setting stalls; too hot and the enzyme loses activity, so the curd may fail to form properly.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, wine, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Clovefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, wine, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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