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Dessert

Lemoit Blancmange

A lemon-flavored custard dessert thickened with rice and gelatin, set in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lemoit Blancmange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Make a custard with the egg yolks and ½ pint of the milk, then transfer to a bowl.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the remaining milk, ground rice, butter, lemon rind, and 3 oz. of sugar; boil while stirring continuously.

  3. Pour the boiled mixture into the bowl with the custard and mix well.

Add gelatin and set

  1. Dissolve the gelatin in the remaining milk in a saucepan, boil for 1-2 minutes, then stir into the bowl along with 3 oz. more of sugar.

  2. Once cooled, stir in the strained lemon juice and pour into a well-oiled mold.

  3. Set the mold in a pan of cold water until ready to serve.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and add richness and a smooth, set texture.
Ground rice
Thickens the milk mixture so the dessert holds its body.
Gelatin
Sets the dessert into a firm, sliceable form as it cools.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dessert.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the ground rice mixture while it boils. Ground rice settles and scorches on the base of the pan if not stirred constantly, and it thickens only as starch gelatinises with heat, so the boil must be kept moving and steady.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, rice, sugar, butter, gelatin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, rice, sugar, butter, gelatin. 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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