My dear Mum used to make this stuff regularly.
Somehow, because of the expectation of something sweeter than the chocolate drops I'd buy by the hundred-weight from the local shop on a Saturday afternoon when I was about ten; my lovely sister and I would go 'Woooooh' and scoop it down without a murmer.
While nurturing GD today, she sat in her high chair, (Grand Daughter, not Mrs S...), and proceeded to spit out another similar delicacy from the Scrobs' formative years - egg custard!
The subsequent discussion ended in confusion, GD looking slightly bilious, and JRT rushing round the floor, hoovering up anything which had been dropped! We both wondered why we used to eat junket, or egg custard, and have decided that it was a delicacy which will always remain in some infantile fantasy, something which was so special because our Mothers had decided it was, and we'd better sit down and enjoy it - or else, but, it will never actually get a mention on a McDonalds menu.
More's the pity, I learned that egg custard had nutmeg sprayed all over it, and also what rennet actually did to milk all those years ago.
Fat lot of good that did...
6 comments:
Egg custard tarts covered in nutmeg, one of my favourite nibbles - which I always choose in preference to a stodgy fattening sticky jam and cream doughnut - along with profiteroles and/or creme caramel.
Talking of childhood nourishment, when I were a wee lad (cue violins or the Hovis ad music in the background) my school used to make us eat a large spoonful of malt every day. To this day I do not know what malt is (or was; or what good it did for a growing lad's physique) or indeed whether it is still available, but my memories of it put it somewhere between slightly sour treacle and melted toffee. At least I was spared the other childhood nightmare - a daily spoonful of the dreaded cod liver oil!
We had Angel Delight, which sounds similar to Junket.
RVI - I don't know about malt, but in some areas of London a very popular drink is Super Malt. I wonder if this is similar and whether it is popular because of supposed health-giving properties? I keep meaning to try but never quite pluck up the courage.
Go for it Blue! Take one for the team (as they say) and let us know how you get on.
We too had Angel Delight as kids - and my brother and I used to fight over who got to scrape the custard saucepan after lunch on Sundays. Eventually we agreed, one would get the skin off the top and the other got to scrape.
They're much nicer Reevers and Blues!
Doughnuts were a staple years ago, and Mrs S put a stop to that pretty soon...
Now, the malt issue.
I remember boys at my prep school - not all of them, taking malt which was provided by their parents. They had a large spoonful once a day, and some of them even had cod-liver oil tinctured malt which tasted disgusting!
When we used to brew our own beer, as far as I could see, the malt we used then (not hopped obviously) was exactly the same thing, and tasted the same - which I faound rather nice.
It's only fermented barley, and as pointed out once by the MD of Shepherd Neame (our favourite Brewer in Kent), it was one of the best ways to get cereals into the working man, because his diet - many years ago, was probably not that good at that!
Blues, I don't know of Super Malt, unless it is a new kind of Scotch...
Yeah we had Angel Delight too, which wasn't. I love egg custard covered in nutmeg. I like nutmeg on my homemade rice pudding too. Yum. My Mum is v.much from the Vesta Curry generation; Dad doesn't like foreign food but if it wasn't from a packet or tin or frozen it wasn't in my childhood diet. We used to buy Tiptops and Jubblys in the summer and fizzy mojos. I started cooking for myself like Matilda - scotch pancakes on the griddle of the huge range cooker we had that mum used to heat up food on. They were out till early evening so they never knew. As long as I cleaned the house from top to bottom on saturdays Mum was happy, if I was quiet and mostly invisible. I didn't discover rennet came from a sheeps stomach til much later and I've never tried making custard tarts. I made lots of Birds trifles though :-)
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