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Dessert

Devonshire Junket

A milk custard set with brandy, sugar, and rennet, topped with thick cream, nutmeg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Devonshire Junket

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Warm the milk until it is blood-warm.

  2. Pour the milk into a deep dish and add the brandy, sugar, and rennet.

  3. Stir the mixture together and cover it until it sets, about 2 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Once set, spread thick cream over the top, grate nutmeg, and sprinkle sugar on top 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 body of the junket and sets into a soft, custard-like curd with the rennet.
Prepared rennet
Causes the milk proteins to coagulate, turning the warm milk into a set curd.
Brandy
Adds a distinct aroma and flavour to the set junket.
Sugar
Sweetens the junket and balances the flavour of the brandy.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty layer over the set curd.

The step that matters

Keep the milk blood-warm when adding the rennet. Rennet works best at about body temperature. If the milk is too hot, the enzyme can be weakened or destroyed, and the junket may fail to set properly.

“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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