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Devonshire Junket
Mix half a tea-spoonful of powdered cinnamon with a heaped table-spoonful of pounded sugar. Pour over these a wine-glassful of brandy, and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Add one quart of quite new milk with a dessert-spoonful of rennet. If the milk cannot be procured fresh from the cow, heat it until it is of the warmth of new milk. Stir it well, and let it remain until it is set, then spread some clotted cream on the top, and strew sifted sugar over. Time, about two hours to set the milk. Probable cost, 6d., exclusive of the brandy and cream. Sufficient for half a dozen persons.
A rennet-set junket is one of the simplest desserts in the book and one of the easiest to ruin: everything depends on the temperature of the milk and on leaving it strictly alone once the rennet goes in.
- The hinge: milk temperatureRennet works at blood heat, roughly 98-100F. Much above that the set becomes unreliable, and at high heat (roughly 140F and above) the enzyme is destroyed and the milk will never set; below about 85F it sets slowly and weakly. "The warmth of new milk" means a thermometer reading near 100F, not warm to the touch and guessed at.
- Do not disturb itStir the rennet in for a few seconds only, then leave the bowl absolutely still in a warm room until set. Moving or jostling the dish while the curd forms breaks it into whey and grains, and it will not come back together.
- Milk that will not setUse pasteurised whole milk. UHT and long-life milk have been heated hard enough to denature the proteins and generally refuse to set with rennet; ultra-pasteurised organic milk is often no better. Un-homogenised whole milk gives the best texture.
- Rennet strengthA dessert-spoonful (about 2 teaspoons) suits the weak liquid rennet essence sold for junkets in the period. Modern liquid animal or vegetarian rennet is far more concentrated; follow the strength on the bottle, which for a quart is usually a few drops to half a teaspoon.
- Wine-glassfulA wine-glassful is conventionally reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so a quarter cup of brandy for the quart.
- Clotted creamGenuine Devonshire clotted cream is scalded, not whipped, and is now sold in jars in many supermarkets. Failing that, use a thick unwhipped double or heavy cream rather than aerated whipped cream, which slumps into the curd.
- Timing and serving"About two hours" is generous; a properly warmed quart often sets in 15-30 minutes. Once firm, chill it and serve within a day. It serves six in small glasses or cups, and it does not travel or keep.
Junket is one of the oldest sweet dishes in English cookery and its name is generally traced to Old French jonchee or jonquette, and the Italian giuncata, from jonc, a rush: the fresh curd was drained and served on a little basket or mat of rushes. By the nineteenth century the word had come to mean the set, undrained curd itself, and in Devon and Cornwall it is said to have been fair-day and harvest food, sold in bowls topped with clotted cream and often laced with brandy or spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg exactly as here. It demonstrates rennet coagulation in its plainest form -- the same reaction that begins every cheese -- and its assumption of milk "fresh from the cow" marks it as a dish of the dairying counties, written when a town cook's alternative was to warm the milkman's delivery and hope.