Milk sweets
Junket
Warm sweetened milk set softly with rennet, an old English pudding once eaten with clotted cream and nutmeg.
Junket is milk sweetened, warmed to blood heat and set with a few drops of rennet. It turns to a soft, quivering curd in the bowl. In Devon and Cornwall it was flavoured with brandy or rum and topped with clotted cream and grated nutmeg. It was a common nursery pudding in Britain into the twentieth century.
What goes in
- Whole milk1071%, Warmed to blood heat.
- Sugar17%, Dissolved in the milk.
- Rennet17%, A few drops.
- Clotted cream and nutmeg214%, To finish.
Rough parts by weight. The ring shows each input's share of the product.
Made step by step
Each drawing shows the operation for that step. Quantities and timings differ from house to house and herd to herd; this is one traditional way, in outline.
Step 1: Cook Warm the milk with sugar to blood heat. Step 2: Set Stir in a few drops of rennet and pour into a dish. Step 3: Set Leave it undisturbed until set. Step 4: Serve Top with clotted cream and grated nutmeg and serve. Finished Junket, by share.
An old name
The word is thought to come from Old French jonquette, a little rush basket, because fresh curds were once drained in baskets of rushes. Medieval junkets were richer curd dishes. By the eighteenth century the name meant the light rennet pudding of today, and Devonshire junket, with its crust of clotted cream, was a dish of the West Country.
Gentle setting
The rennet must meet milk at the right warmth: too cool and it will not set, too hot and the rennet stops working. The bowl must then be left alone until it sets. Junket was thought suitable for children and invalids, and in some places it was the treat of a summer afternoon.
Where it is used
The breeds behind it
Also part of it, and being written: Jersey cattle (Channel Island breed with creamy milk.), Dairy Shorthorn (Britain's commonest dairy cow in the nineteenth century.).
More on EveryCow
No breeds here yet. New pages are added every day.
Sources and further reading
Original text and drawings by the EveryCow desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. The shares are a rough, illustrative ratio, not a recipe: every family and dairy makes it differently. If we have something wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- South Devon: No machine-readable author provided. Malcolm Morley~commonswiki assume, Public domain, source