#Junkit custerd how to#
#Junkit custerd professional#

“Make a plain Junket, flavoring with vanilla, and pour into individual Junket glasses, filling each glass two-thirds full. The recipe I chose is called “Junket with Fresh Berries,” and it is just a paragraph explaining how you can the take the plain Junket recipe and jazz it up a bit. There are no sick people in my house, so I decided that “a few extra touches” were in order. But, as the marketing for Junket and so many other contemporary foods shows, we are not as far removed as we might think from the times when food and medicine were one. Today, for the most part, we keep food and medicine as separate categories. Like so many other foods in the 19th and early 20th centuries, its manufacturer touted Junket as medicine.

#Junkit custerd professional#

That it can be prepared as good a plain food for the children, or with a few extra touches made into a delicious dessert for the family, is the story of Junket that many a busy housewife could tell.īut of its great value as a perfect healthful food especially for the young, growing child or as a nourishing, sustaining, food for the sick and invalids we prize the testimonials of the professional people: -Doctors, Nurses, Domestic Science Teachers, Cooking Experts and others who speak from a scientific standpoint.” 2 Of the many good points about Junket its healthfulness is best and most important. The booklet opens, of course, exalting the benefits and deliciousness of Junket This recipe booklet has a lot of recipes for rennet custards but also ice creams, baby food, cheese, etc. So I searched online for the earliest booklet I could find and found one from 1913 called “Dainty Junkets.”

#Junkit custerd how to#

After all, if you don’t know how to use something chances are you won’t buy it. These booklets served to advertise their product but also to teach American housewives how to use the product. Hansen’s Laboratory, the name of the company at the time, produced a plethora of recipe booklets. Thankfully, just like so many other food companies of the time, Chr. Then, it was just a matter of finding a recipe. When I finally decided that I wanted to make junket, I ended up having to order a pack of tablets from the Junket. Or maybe Americans just outgrew their taste for it. Since mid-century the popularity of Junket has plummeted, probably due to being under a variety of companies that were not all that invested in the product. And believe me, I have looked a lot over the years. Well, at least not in any grocery store I have ever looked in. Some of them, including the Danish desserts, are still available today.

And in addition to the rennet tablets, there was a whole line of flavored and colored desserts, both rennet and not rennet based. In fact, in the recipe booklet from which this recipe comes from has a recipe that says “if required as a medium for administering wine, brandy, or whiskey in sickness as much as four tablespoonfuls may be used.”īy the 1940s junket desserts were so popular that whole events where it was served came to be known as junkets. Yes, people until not that long ago considered alcohol to be good for the sick. That is, food for ailing people, sometimes as the delivery method for alcohol. People of all ages ate this milk dessert, and it was often used as invalid food. The invention came from a Danish immigrant in New York state named Johan Fredericksen who wanted to expand his rennet business to include not just large-scale cheese manufacturers but the home market as well.Įventually the company changed the name of the tablets to Junket Tablets since that was what people called them anyway. Then, in the late 19th century a new invention targeted to women – rennet tablets – changed the way the dessert was made. Though can certainly still buy animal rennet in liquid form.

Today, the tablets contain vegetable rennet so they are vegetarian. It was probably more like a fresh cheese than the custard-like dessert it eventually became.Īt the time, they used liquid animal rennet, which is the same coagulant used in cheesemaking. It turns out though that junkets date back to the Middle Ages.īack then, though, they used cream rather than milk to make this dish, and they did separate the whey from the curds. It was not until relatively recently though that I learned junket was also a dessert made with the tablets of the same name. I first heard about junket tablets, a form of rennet, from a cheesemaking book several years ago, about the same time I first used rennet. Have you ever heard of junket, or junket tablets? Probably not.