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Chocolate (Tablespoons boiling water)
3 tablespoons boiling water 1 junket tablet 1 quart milk 1 tablespoon wine or brandy + cup powdered sugar Melt chocolate; add boiling water. Crush junket tablet; dissolve in one tablespoon cold water. Scald milk; add sugar, flavoring; when cool, add dissolved junket tablet and melted chocolate; pour into serving cups; let stand in warm place until of consistency of jelly, then chill. Serve with sugar and cream.
This is a chocolate junket -- milk set with rennet rather than eggs or gelatine. Everything depends on temperature and on the milk itself.
- The hinge: milk temperatureRennet works best at about blood heat, and its action is weakened or lost as the milk gets hotter. Scald the milk, then let it fall to about 100-110F (lukewarm on the wrist) before the tablet goes in. Too hot and it may never set; too cold and it sets slowly or not at all.
- Use ordinary pasteurised milkUltra-pasteurised and UHT milk coagulate poorly or not at all with rennet, because the high heat interferes with the proteins rennet acts on. Standard whole pasteurised milk gives the firmest set; skimmed milk tends to set weakly and weep.
- Junket tabletsThese are rennet tablets, still sold for cheesemaking and for junket, though rarely in supermarkets. Strengths vary by brand, so go by the packet directions; the recipe here uses one tablet to a quart. Liquid vegetable or animal rennet works too; follow the strength on the bottle rather than substituting by volume.
- Do not disturb itPour into the serving cups immediately after stirring in the rennet and leave them absolutely still. Moving or stirring the milk once coagulation begins breaks the curd and you get grainy whey rather than a smooth set.
- Chocolate quantityThe chocolate quantity is missing from the printed ingredient line. Something in the region of an ounce or so of unsweetened baking chocolate to a quart of milk is a reasonable starting point. Melt it and thin with the boiling water to a smooth paste before it meets the milk, or it will seize into specks.
- SugarThe sugar measure is incomplete in the printed line. A quarter to a half cup of powdered sugar suits a quart of milk with unsweetened chocolate; taste the scalded milk before cooling.
- "A warm place"Somewhere gently warm and draught-free -- a turned-off oven with the light on, or simply a warm corner of the kitchen. Setting usually takes a matter of minutes rather than hours. Once it holds the shape of a jelly, move it straight to the refrigerator rather than leaving it standing warm.
- YieldAbout six small cups. Junket is at its best within a few hours; by the next day it slumps and releases whey.
Junket -- milk set with rennet, the same enzyme that starts cheese -- was one of the standard nursery and invalid puddings of the nineteenth century, valued because it was thought easier to digest than a baked custard. Commercial rennet tablets, sold under the Junket name in America from the late 1800s, put it within reach of any household and turned an old dairy technique into a five-minute dessert. Lowney's, a Boston chocolate firm, published its cook book to show off uses for its own product, so a plain nursery junket here acquires melted chocolate and a spoonful of wine or brandy to lift it from sickroom fare to something fit for the dinner table.