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Dessert

Raspberry Blanc-mange

A chilled dessert made from milk, corn starch, sugar, and raspberry juice, thickened and steamed, then molded.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Raspberry Blanc-mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the blancmange

  1. Bring 1 pint of fresh milk to a boil.

  2. In a small bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of corn starch with a little cold milk until smooth.

  3. Stir the corn starch mixture into the boiling milk.

  4. Add 2 tablespoons of sugar and ½ cup of raspberry juice while thickening.

  5. Transfer the mixture to a double boiler and steam for 30 minutes.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into molds, cool, and serve with sweet 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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + raspberrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,014 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Corn + raspberrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together86 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

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

  5. Sugar + raspberrytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,101 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 into a smooth, sliceable set as its starch granules swell when heated.
Fresh milk
Forms the creamy base that the starch thickens into a soft, set custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the raspberry juice.
Raspberry juice
Provides the flavour and pink colour of the blancmange.

The step that matters

Stirring the starch into the boiling milk. Cornstarch clumps if added dry or unmixed, so it must be fully smoothed in cold milk first. Then it must be stirred continuously while hot so the granules swell evenly and thicken without lumps.

Swap the raspberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, corn, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, corn, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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