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Dessert

Mont Blanc

A gelatin dessert made with meringue, sugar, lemon juice, milk custard, and set in molds or glasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mont Blanc

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine base

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Add boiling water to the soaked gelatine.

  3. Let it cool.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  5. Mix the cooled gelatine with the beaten egg whites, sugar, and lemon juice.

  6. Beat thoroughly for 30 minutes.

  7. Pour the mixture into a mold or a dozen egg glasses.

  8. Refrigerate until set.

Make the custard and serve

  1. Cook the egg yolks with the milk.

  2. Sweeten to taste.

  3. Serve the set gelatine in glasses topped with the cold custard.

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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 mixture into a firm, sliceable base once cooled.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff foam, they add lightness and airy texture to the set mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and adds body to the mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the dessert.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard, adding richness and creaminess.

The step that matters

Beat thoroughly for 30 minutes. Gelatine begins to set as it cools, so the mixture must be beaten while still loose enough to trap air. Under-beating leaves a dense, uneven texture, and beating after it sets will not incorporate air.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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