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Dessert

Junket Cream Ice with Strawberries

A chilled dessert made from double cream, sugar, vanilla, and rennet, thickened with flour and cherry syrup, folded with egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and cherry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 890 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Junket Cream Ice with Strawberries

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 100°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the junket base

  1. Heat the double cream and sugar in a double boiler until lukewarm (not above 100°F). Remove the mixture from heat.

  2. Stir in the vanilla extract and rennet mixture.

  3. Let the mixture stand undisturbed in a warm room for 10–15 minutes.

  4. Pour the jellied mixture into the freezer can.

  5. Freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Make the cherry custard

  1. Mix the flour and salt with cold syrup or water to form a smooth paste.

  2. Stir the paste into the hot cherry syrup.

  3. Cook the mixture until thickened.

  4. Beat the egg yolks and stir them into the mixture along with the lemon juice.

  5. When cool, fold in the beaten egg whites.

Finish and serve

  1. Turn the mixture into the decorated mold.

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. Vanilla + cherrytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together890 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Junket + syruptop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, 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

Double cream
Provides richness and body, and sets into a soft, creamy texture when chilled.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the texture of the frozen ice cream.
Liquid rennet or junket tablet
Enzyme that clots the warm cream into a jelly-like base before freezing.
Flour
Thickens the cherry syrup into a smooth, stable sauce when cooked.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the cherry custard.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they add lightness and an airy texture.

The step that matters

Heat the cream only to lukewarm, not above 100°F. Rennet is an enzyme that clots the cream's proteins, and excessive heat weakens or destroys it. If the cream is too hot, it may not set into the jelly needed before freezing.

Swap the cherry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, vanilla, junket, flour, syrup, egg):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Bananafits better
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, vanilla, junket, flour, syrup, egg. 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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