Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Cook's Guide entry for Rennet along with all the Rennet containing recipes presented on this site, with 4 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Rennet recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Rennet as a major wild food ingredient.

Rennet is a natural complex of enzymes produced in any mammalian stomach as an aid to digesting the mother's milk. Rennet contains a proteolytic enzyme (protease) that coagulates the milk, causing it to separate into solids (curds) and liquid (whey). The active enzyme in rennet is called rennin or chymosin but there are also other enzymes such as pepsin and lipase. The chief use of rennet is in the making of cheese, curd and junket. Commercially rennet was extracted from from the inner mucosa of the fourth stomach chamber. Dried and cleaned stomachs of young calves are sliced into small pieces and then put into saltwater, together with some vinegar or wine to get a lower pH. After some time — overnight or several days — this solution has to be filtered. This crude rennet can then be used for coagulation of the milk.

There are now many vegetable-based rennets available and these are used to make vegetarian cheeses which are becoming increasingly common.