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Dessert

Devonshire Junket

A sweet custard made with lemon, milk, cream, brandy, and rennet, topped with Devonshire cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Devonshire Junket

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the sugar on the lemon until the yellow rind is absorbed.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the lemon-sugar mixture with the milk and cream, and heat until warm but not boiling.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the warm mixture into a bowl containing the brandy.

  2. Add the rennet and stir gently until the milk sets.

  3. Once set, top with a thick layer of Devonshire 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.

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

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

  2. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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 once the rennet acts on it.
Rennet
Enzyme that causes the warm milk to coagulate into a soft set curd.
Cream
Adds fat for a richer, smoother texture in the set dish.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, rubbed on the lemon, draws out its aromatic oils.
Brandy
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the base.

The step that matters

Heating the milk and cream. The milk should be warm but not boiling. Rennet works best at body temperature, and boiling can damage the enzyme and cause the milk to separate or set unevenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, cream, brandy. 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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