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Junket
2 teaspoons rennet, or 2 teaspoons lukewarm junket tablet water Heat the milk to lukewarm (99°F.) in double boiler. Add sugar and flavoring, and stir until sugar is dissolved. Add junket dissolved in water, and pour into dish from which custard is to be served. Let stand until cool and firm. Serve with cream, soft custard, fruit, or fruit syrup. Cinnamon, nutmeg, cocoanut, chocolate, cocoa, or other flavor may be substituted for vanilla.
The lunch carried from home requires thought in planning so that it will be satisfying, nutritious and appetizing. The container used plays a large part in keeping the lunch in good condition.
The lunch box should be dust-proof, well ventilated and easily washed. Metal boxes have these advantages, and when collapsible they are easy to carry home. Some are arranged in compartments and are equipped with thermos bottles.
Baskets are not easily cleaned and unless the food is well wrapped, it dries out quickly.
Fibre boxes are cheap, but they are absorbent and therefore hard to keep clean.
Wax paper, paper napkins, paper plates and containers, paper or collapsible metal cups, thermos bottles and sealtight jars all aid in preparing lunches. The container should be lined with a paper napkin and each article wrapped separately in waxed paper, and placed in the order in which the food will be eaten. Articles should be packed compactly so that the food cannot be shaken about.
The lunch box menu should be planned to include a substantial food, a juicy fruit or vegetable, a simple dessert and a beverage. Sandwiches, which are usually included, should be made from dayold bread, which may be graham, whole wheat, rye, rolls or white bread. In cutting the bread, arrange the slices so that they will fit together. Cream the butter or butter substitute until soft enough to spread easily. The butter tends to prevent a soft filling from making the bread soggy.
Junket is milk set with rennet rather than eggs or gelatine, which is why it appears among invalid dishes: it is barely cooked, faintly sweet and very easy to swallow. The whole recipe hinges on temperature and stillness.
- Temperature is everythingRennet sets milk best at around blood heat, close to the 99F the recipe specifies. It works sluggishly in cool milk and loses its power as the milk gets hot, so scalded or near-simmering milk will not set. Use a thermometer rather than judging by touch.
- Do not disturb itOnce the rennet goes in, stir only a few seconds and pour immediately into the serving dish. Moving or jarring the dish while it is setting breaks the curd and leaves you with sweet whey and lumps.
- Setting and chillingIt firms at room temperature in about 10 to 15 minutes. Chill only after it has set; putting it straight into the refrigerator stalls the rennet.
- Rennet todayJunket tablets are still sold, as is liquid animal rennet and vegetarian microbial rennet for cheesemaking. Strengths differ enormously between products, so follow the dose on the package you have rather than the two teaspoons given here.
- Milk to useWhole pasteurized milk works well. Avoid ultra-pasteurized or UHT milk, which has been heated hard enough that it often will not coagulate at all.
- ProportionsThe quantities of milk, sugar and vanilla have not survived in this entry. Comparable junket recipes of the period tend to run to about 1 pint milk with 1 to 2 tablespoons sugar and half a teaspoon vanilla, which would serve three or four.
- FlavouringsCocoa and chocolate need to be dissolved in a little of the warm milk before the rennet goes in, since neither will disperse once the milk is still. Acidic fruit and fruit syrup should be added as a topping after setting, not stirred in, or they will interfere with the curd.
Rennet-set milk is one of the oldest sweets in the European repertoire, an ancestor of both cheese and the medieval dish called daryols or curds and whey; in Britain the same preparation is junket in the south and west and often "curds" further north. The commercial junket tablet, sold from the late nineteenth century, put standardized rennet in a grocery box and turned a farmhouse dish into a nursery and sickroom staple. It is nourishing milk in a form that requires no chewing and almost no digestive effort, and it was prescribed accordingly to convalescents, infants and the elderly well into the middle of the twentieth century.