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Dessert

Green Blancmange of Isinglass

A green almond dessert thickened with isinglass, flavored with spinach juice and French brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 352 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Green Blancmange of Isinglass

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dissolve the isinglass in a small amount of water.

  2. Add the sweet and bitter almonds, and the spinach juice.

  3. Stir in the French brandy.

Make and set

  1. Heat over a stove until almost boiling.

  2. Strain through a fine sieve when it thickens.

  3. Pour into a melon mold and refrigerate overnight.

  4. Turn out the next day and garnish with red and white flowers.

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. Almond + spinachtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together352 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Almond + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,969 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Spinach + brandytop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together43 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Isinglass
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable gel as it cools.
Sweet almonds
Provide the main almond flavour and a creamy, smooth body.
Bitter almonds
Add a stronger, more aromatic almond note to the blancmange.
French brandy
Adds aroma and a warm, spirited flavour to the dessert.

The step that matters

Strain through a fine sieve when it thickens. Straining while the mixture is still warm removes almond fibres and any lumps, giving a smooth texture. If it has already set too firmly, it becomes hard to pass through the sieve and the finished blancmange will be grainy.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, brandy):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, brandy. 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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