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Devonshire Junket

A sweetened milk dessert curdled with rennet, topped with Devonshire cream and white sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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. Warm the milk as for cheese.

  2. Sweeten the milk to taste and add a splash of brandy.

  3. Add essence of rennet and let it stand until curdled.

Top and serve

  1. Top with a layer of Devonshire cream and sift white sugar over.

  2. Serve in the dish it was made in.

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 + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Brandy + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  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).

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 base, and its proteins set into a soft curd when rennet is added.
Essence of rennet
Enzyme that causes the milk to coagulate into a delicate, spoonable set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the milk and to the topping.
Devonshire cream
Adds richness and fat in a smooth layer over the set curd.
Brandy
Adds a light aroma to the milk.

The step that matters

Let the milk stand undisturbed after adding rennet. Rennet sets the milk into a fragile curd only while the milk is still. Stirring or moving the dish before it has set breaks the curd, so the junket stays runny 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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