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Dessert

Devonshire Junket

A milk pudding made with new milk, rennet, scalded cream, sugar, cinnamon, and optional harlequin comfits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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

Set the curd

  1. Warm the new milk to the temperature it is when fresh from the cow.

  2. Add rennet to the warm milk and stir gently.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour in the scalded cream.

  2. Sprinkle sugar and pounded cinnamon on top.

  3. Serve without disturbing the curd.

  4. Optionally, sprinkle with small harlequin comfits.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

New milk
Provides the protein that rennet sets into a soft, tender curd.
Rennet
An enzyme that clots the warm milk into a delicate set curd.
Scalded cream
Adds richness and fat for a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the mild, savoury dairy flavour.

The step that matters

Serve without disturbing the curd. Rennet sets the milk into a fragile gel held together by a delicate protein network. Stirring or jarring it after setting breaks this network, so the junket turns grainy and loose instead of firm and smooth.

“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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