Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Fruit Blanc Mange
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit juice
Stew the fresh or canned fruit and strain off the juice.
Sweeten the juice to taste and heat it in a double boiler until it boils.
Thicken and set
Stir in 2 tablespoons of cornstarch mixed with a little cold water.
Continue stirring until the mixture is sufficiently cooked.
Pour into molds that have been wet with cold water and set aside to cool.
Serve
Serve with cream and sugar.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fresh or canned fruit
- Provides the main flavour and colour, and the juice that forms the dessert.
- Cornstarch
- Thickens the hot juice as it cooks, giving the blanc its set, sliceable body.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the juice to taste, balancing the tartness of the fruit.
The step that matters
Continue stirring until the mixture is sufficiently cooked. Cornstarch only thickens fully once it boils and its starch granules swell. Stopping too early leaves a raw, starchy taste and a loose set, so the mixture must be cooked through while being stirred to prevent lumps.
“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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