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Dessert

Chocolate Blancmange

A chilled dessert made with gelatin, sweet milk, chocolate, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Blancmange

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water until soft.

Make the blancmange

  1. Heat the sweet milk in a saucepan until it reaches a boiling point.

  2. Stir in the grated chocolate and sugar until dissolved.

  3. Add the soaked gelatine just before pouring into molds.

Set and serve

  1. Refrigerate until set and serve cold with sugar and 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. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid milk mixture into a firm, sliceable body as it cools.
Sweet milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that carries the chocolate and sets with the gelatine.
Grated chocolate
Adds chocolate flavour and some richness to the milk base.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Add the soaked gelatine just before pouring into molds. Gelatine begins to set as it cools, so adding it at the end, once the mixture is ready, keeps it from setting in the pan and forming lumps. It should be fully dissolved and evenly distributed before the mixture goes into molds.

“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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