rennet

Meaning

Noun

• An enzyme used as the first step in making cheese, to curdle the milk and coagulate the casein in it, derived by soaking the fourth stomach of a milk-fed calf in brine.
• Alternative of reinette.

Origin

• From Middle English renet, a variant of renelesse, renels, renlys, rendlys, from rennen, from Old English rennan, from Proto-Germanic *rannijaną. Compare Middle Dutch rinsel, runsel, Middle English irennen, Old English ġerennan, German gerinnen.
• Anglicized form of reinette.