[Sca-cooks] jellied milk

[Stefan li Rous]

  Simon Hondy asked:
> Isn't jellied milk essentially Junket?  Jelling the milk with  
> Rennet rather
> than gelatin?

To elaborate a bit more on the doubts I had about this being true, I  
happened to see this pair of messages in the unpublished file which  
will eventually become the jellied-milk-msg file.

Stefan
 >>>>>>
Date: Sun, 04 Jul 2004 23:42:36 -0400
From: AEllin Olafs dotter <aellin at earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] gelatin vs. renet
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

Samrah wrote:
 > Can anybody tell me the difference or when it is appropriate to use
 > one instead of the other?  Does it make a difference in milk dishes,
 > like cremes?  And do any of you have a preference in brands of
 > gelatins, either for general effectiveness or cost efficiency?

Yes, that's going to make a huge difference! They're quite different.

Gelatin is a protein that, um, gels. You know, Jello. You can use it in
milk, and it will make a gel which can be molded. (I have - used to
have? - a recipe someplace for a spiced molded milk dessert that was
always on the I Should Try That list, but which I never did make.) It
needs to be kept cold, will melt with heat.

Rennet is quite different. That's what you use to make cheese. (An
enzyme, I think? Someone else will have to give you the science behind d
this.) You can use small amounts, with just warm milk, to make junket -
a solid milk dessert - and my guess is that this is what is confusing
you. But the Junket tablets come with directions for making cottage
cheese, too... *G* if you heat the milk further, it makes curds. And you
can further make all kinds of cheese with rennet - either the junket
tablet or a somewhat easier to use liquid rennet you can get from a
cheesemaking supply shop.

The only plain  gelatin I'm really familiar with is Knox. Very reliable,
I've used it for years for aspic and with fruit and juice for desserts
that aren't solid sugar. Junket is a brand name (as well as a dessert)
and fairly readily available, if you want to do a simple experiment.

AEllin


Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2004 12:10:48 -0400
From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius"
       <adamantius.magister at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] gelatin vs. renet
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

Also sprach Samrah:
 > Can anybody tell me the difference or when it is appropriate to use
 > one instead of the other?  Does it make a difference in milk dishes,
 > like cremes?  And do any of you have a preference in brands of
 > gelatins, either for general effectiveness or cost efficiency?

AEllin touched on this briefly, but something crossed my mind that I
felt should be added.

I'm not sure where gelatin features as a classic, traditional
addition to a dairy product like milk. Yes, you can add it, and it'll
gel, but what you get is a milk jelly or perhaps a white leach
(assuming it's firm enough to be sliced). You don't get junket,
curds, or cheese.

Using rennet, either as junket tablets (which form weak curds
specifically designed for junket), or in more concentrated form,
either as tablets or in the form of a liquid sometimes used in making
cheeses, you get something more familiar in the cheesemaker's art.

And yes, this is what AEllin mentioned, but what just occurred to me
is that when using gelatin to set milk, you can't really drain off
any significant amount of water, so a quart of milk is a quart of
white leach. If you're calculating numbers of servings, this is an
important distinction.

Junket (whose name appears to derive from the woven basket
traditionally used to drain the uncut curds), is drained, if only
slightly, so you'd lose some mass in the finished product; a quart of
milk would not make, say, eight four-ounce servings.

Adamantius
<<<<
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****