Name: Rennet Preparation
Ingredients: 1 handful coarse sea salt; 3 pints new whey or boiled water (cooled to 65°F); 1 rennet bag from a newly-dropped calf; 8 pints new whey or boiled water (if using rennet from a calf fed for 4-5 weeks); 1 dram (1 teaspoon) whisky (optional)

Why it works: Whey and whisky work together. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Rennet Preparation

Ingredients

1 handful coarse sea salt
3 pints new whey or boiled water (cooled to 65°F)
1 rennet bag from a newly-dropped calf
8 pints new whey or boiled water (if using rennet from a calf fed for 4-5 weeks)
1 dram (1 teaspoon) whisky (optional)

Directions

Preserve the rennet bag

Remove impurities from curdled milk and preserve it with a handful of salt.
Roll the curdled milk and place it in a jar, adding another handful of salt on top.
Cover and let it stand for 8-10 days.
Afterward, tie it in white paper and hang it near a fire to dry for up to a year.

Make the rennet

To prepare rennet, cut the bag into small pieces and place it in a jar with salt.
Add new whey or cooled boiled water to the jar.
Let it infuse for 1-3 days, then strain the liquid and bottle it for use.
Optionally, add 1 teaspoon of whisky 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.

Whey + whiskytop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Rennet bag: Contains the enzymes that clot milk into curd when the liquid is infused.
Salt: Draws moisture out and helps preserve the curdled milk and rennet bag.
New whey or boiled water: Acts as the liquid that extracts the enzymes from the rennet bag.
Whisky: Adds a preservative effect to the finished rennet liquid.

The step that matters

Cut the bag into small pieces before infusing. Smaller pieces give more surface area, so the enzymes release into the liquid more fully and evenly during the 1-3 day infusion.

“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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Rennet Preparation