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Dessert

Devonshire Junket

A milk-based dessert thickened with rennet, flavored with brandy and sugar, and garnished with nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,685 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Devonshire Junket

Ingredients

Directions

Make the junket

  1. Warm the milk to blood heat.

  2. Add the brandy and sugar to the milk.

  3. Pour the mixture into a bowl and add enough rennet to curdle the milk.

Set and serve

  1. Let it stand for two hours.

  2. Grate nutmeg over the junket 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. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Brandy + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

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

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

  5. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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
Its proteins form a soft curd when rennet acts on it, giving the junket its body.
Essence of rennet
An enzyme that clots the milk into a delicate, spoonable set.
Brandy
Adds a warm aroma and flavour to the mild milk.
Caster sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savoury taste of the milk.

The step that matters

Warming the milk to blood heat. Rennet works best at about body temperature. If the milk is too hot, the enzyme is damaged and the milk may not set; if it is too cold, curdling is slow and weak.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, brandy, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Clovefits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, brandy, sugar. 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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