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Gelatine Blanc Mange

A plain gelatin dessert made with milk, eggs, sugar, and vanilla, served with sugar and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Gelatine Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatin

  1. Soak the gelatin in 1½ pints of milk for 1 hour.

  2. Place the mixture over a kettle of boiling water.

  3. Once boiling, add the beaten yolks of 3 eggs and 4 tablespoons of sugar, stirring briskly for a few moments.

Finish and serve

  1. When partly cool, fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Flavor with vanilla, then cool in a mold.

  3. Serve 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla 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

Gelatine
Sets the milk mixture into a firm, sliceable body as it cools.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk mixture and add richness when heated with it.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in, they add lightness and an airy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the gelatine sets and the yolks enrich.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten yolks to the hot mixture. Stirring briskly while adding the yolks helps them blend evenly and thicken gently, rather than scrambling into lumps from direct contact with heat.

“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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