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Dessert

Devonshire Junket

A sweetened milk dessert made by curdling warm milk with rennet, then adding thick cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

Make the junket

  1. In a bowl, combine warm milk and rennet liquor.

  2. Keep the mixture in a warm place until the whey separates and looks clear.

  3. Strain the curds and whey.

Serve

  1. Sweeten the curds to taste and pour them into a dish.

  2. Top with thick cream from scalded milk 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 as rennet sets it into soft curds.
Rennet liquor
Contains rennet enzymes that coagulate the milk into curds and whey.
Thick cream from scalded milk
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty topping to the set curds.

The step that matters

Keeping the mixture warm until the whey separates. Rennet works best at a gentle warm temperature. If the milk gets too hot or too cold, it may set poorly or not form clean curds and clear whey.

“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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