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Dessert

Oswego Blanc-mange

A custard-like dessert made with corn starch, milk, sugar, salt, and vanilla, set in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Oswego Blanc-mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix 1 gill of milk with the corn starch.

  2. In a saucepan, heat the remaining milk over boiling water until scalding.

  3. Add the corn starch mixture, salt, and sugar to the scalding milk, stirring until smooth and thick.

  4. Keep over boiling water for 5 minutes, then stir in the vanilla.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold that has been wet with cold water and let it cool.

  2. Serve cold with sugar and cream.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the blanc-mange its firm, sliceable set.
Milk
Forms the body of the pudding and, with starch, sets into a creamy custard as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and softens the flavour of the starch.

The step that matters

Stirring the starch into the scalding milk. Corn starch must be stirred constantly as it heats so it disperses evenly without lumps. Once the mixture thickens, the starch granules swell and gelatinise, which is what gives the set when it cools.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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