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To Prepare Rennet to Turn the Milk

A method for making rennet from a calf stomach using herbs and spices.

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 a calf with salt and let it drain for a few hours.

  2. Sew it up with two handfuls of salt or stretch it on a salted stick.

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.

  3. When warm, pour the liquid over the cleaned stomach.

Steep and bottle

  1. Slice a lemon into the mixture and let it stand for 2 days.

  2. 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

Calf stomach
Supplies the natural enzymes that curdle milk, which is the rennet's purpose.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the liquid and helps it keep its flavour during steeping.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic flavour to the steeped liquid.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet aroma to the steeped liquid.

The step that matters

Pouring the warm liquid over the stomach. Rennet enzymes are sensitive to heat, so the liquid should be only warm, not hot. Too much heat can weaken or destroy the enzymes that curdle milk later.

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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