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Dessert

Arrow-root Blanc-mange

A custard dessert made with milk, cream, vanilla, chocolate, arrowroot, and sugar, set in molds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Arrow-root Blanc-mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the blancmange

  1. In a saucepan, boil 1 quart of milk with a piece of vanilla bean, tightly covered.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix ½ pint of cream with 1 teacup of chocolate mange and ⅓ cup of arrow-root until smooth.

  3. Pour the boiling milk into the arrow-root mixture, stirring well.

  4. Return the mixture to the saucepan and let it simmer for 10 minutes.

  5. Sweeten to your taste and pour into molds to cool.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream, flavored to your preference.

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. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar 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

Arrow-root
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the blancmange its firm, set texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into a creamy custard.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, smoother mouthfeel.
Chocolate mange
Adds chocolate flavor and color, along with extra thickening from its starch.

The step that matters

Stirring the boiling milk into the arrow-root mixture. Arrowroot starch clumps if it meets very hot liquid without enough stirring. Adding the hot milk gradually while stirring well keeps the starch dispersed so the mixture thickens smoothly.

“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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