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To Prepare Rennet to Turn the Milk

A method for making rennet by steeping a calf stomach in a spiced water infusion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

To Prepare Rennet to Turn the Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stomach

  1. Clean the stomach of the calf with salt and let it drain for a few hours.

  2. Sew the stomach with 2 handfuls of salt or stretch it on a stick well salted.

Make the liquid

  1. In a pot, combine 2 quarts of fresh spring water with hawthorn-tops, sweet-briar, rose-leaves, cinnamon, cloves, mace, marjoram, and salt.

  2. Boil gently until reduced to 3 pints, then strain and let cool to milk-warm.

Steep and bottle

  1. Pour the liquid over the stomach and slice a lemon into it.

  2. Let it stand for 2 days, then strain again and bottle for use.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Cinnamon + marjoramtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Stomach of a calf
Contains the natural enzymes that curdle milk, which is the purpose of this preparation.
Lemon
Adds acidity to the steeping liquid, contributing a sharp, bright note.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aromatic flavour to the infused liquid.
Cloves
Adds warm aromatic flavour to the infused liquid.
Mace
Adds warm aromatic flavour to the infused liquid.

The step that matters

Let cool to milk-warm before pouring over the stomach. Enzymes in the stomach are sensitive to heat, so liquid that is too hot can weaken or destroy the activity needed for later curdling. Cooling to milk-warm keeps the steeping gentle.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rose, cinnamon, clove, marjoram, lemon):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rose, cinnamon, clove, marjoram, lemon. 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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