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[[File:Mięsne, mleczne, neutralne.png|400px|right|]]
Before eating or drinking anything, a Jew must first establish which of the following three categories of food that thing belongs to: meat, dairy or neutral. Neutral foods are those that you can eat together with either meat or dairy (but not with both at the same time, obviously). These include all plant-based products (including honey), as well is inorganic aliments, like water and salt. Eggs and fish are neutral as well, although rabbis advise against eating fish together with meat anyway. Bread, as a basic staple, must always be neutral, so kosher bread should never contain milk or butter.
Some rabbis have classified certain animal-based foodstuffs, such as gelatin or rennet, as neutral, although it must have required some impressive mental acrobatics on their part. Gelatin is made from skin and bones, that is, these body parts which are not normally considered fit for human consumption. And the rules of ''kashrut'' are only concerned with food, so they don't apply to anything that's inedible. Same thing with rennet, an enzyme obtained from a calf's stomach and used in the production of most yellow cheeses. Pure dried rennet doesn't resemble meat in any way and no one in their right mind would eat it. So it seems we're good. But on the other hand, gelatin and rennet are added to food, which means they are edible after all. But then, you only add very small amounts, and very small amounts of things unkosher are sometimes permissible when mixed with large amounts of kosher stuff. But on the fourth hand, this rule only applies, if the small amount of the unkosher additive doesn't affect the overall characteristics of the whole product; and the whole point of using gelatin or rennet is that we want them to affect the overall characteristics of the whole product… And so on, and so forth. In the end, the more liberal Jews will probably partake of rennet-set cheese or jelly cheesecake (provided, of course, that the rennet or the gelatin comes from kosher animals butchered in a kosher way). Those more strict will rather look for plant-based or microbiological equivalents.