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Dessert

Chocolate Junket

A sweet milk dessert thickened with a junket tablet and flavored with chocolate and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Junket

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chocolate milk

  1. Sweeten the milk with sugar.

  2. Melt the chocolate or cocoa with ½ cup of the milk and boil for 1 minute.

  3. Remove from heat and add the remaining milk, ensuring it does not boil.

  4. Stir in the vanilla and heat until lukewarm if necessary.

Set and serve

  1. Add the solution of the junket tablet and stir well.

  2. Pour into serving dishes and leave undisturbed until firm.

  3. Cool and serve, optionally topped with sweetened whipped cream flavored with vanilla.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + junkettop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together82 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 dessert and, with the junket tablet, sets into a soft custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the milk and balances the chocolate flavor.
Chocolate or cocoa
Provides the chocolate flavor and color.
Junket tablet
Contains rennet, which curdles the milk into a soft, set gel.

The step that matters

Add the milk only when it is no longer boiling. Boiling milk can scorch and alter its flavor, and very hot milk weakens the rennet's ability to coagulate, so the junket may fail to set firmly.

“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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