In a letter to Leigh Hunt in May 1817, John Keats wrote that composing Endymion felt like ‘a continual uphill Journeying’. ‘John Keats alias Junkets’, he signed off, as if to remind us that, however tortuous it may be to find oneself writing, writing itself has that rich and strange ability to disguise the graft of its making behind the impish mischief it continues to make. Just so, the idea of a junket, of an unabashed bean-feast carried off on somebody else’s time and money, craftily conceals its own more functional linguistic heritage. For, as the OED suggests, in spite of its ‘somewhat obscure history’, junket finds ways to reach back to the Pontine marshes south-east of Rome, to their fenland yield of juncus or rushes, to the medieval juncata, the rush-basket for catching and carrying fish, and to the creamy juncade or jonquette, the cheese named for the basket it was prepared in. If from there it becomes a sweetmeat or kickshaw, if it spreads to merrymaking and banqueting and more capricious jaunting, then it seems appropriate to let it represent what The Junket should aspire to: modest materials that are worked with care, before taking on an errant, boisterous life. (Source The Junket )
