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To Prepare Rennet, to Turn the Milk

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

  1. Remove the stomach from a calf immediately after killing and clean it with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let it drain for a few hours, then sew it up with two handfuls of salt or stretch it on a salted stick.

  3. Alternatively, keep it in salted water and soak it repeatedly.

  4. Clean the maw as described, then boil 2 quarts of fresh spring water with hawthorn tops, sweet briar, rose leaves, cinnamon, cloves, mace, marjoram, and salt until reduced to 3 pints.

  5. Strain the mixture and let it cool to milk-warm, then pour it over the maw.

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

  7. Strain it 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

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.

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