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Dessert

Chocolate Blanc Mange

A chocolate custard made with cornflour, sugar, powdered chocolate, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and chocolate 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 Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate mixture

  1. Mix the cornflour with a little milk until smooth.

  2. Add the powdered chocolate and mix thoroughly.

Cook and set

  1. In a saucepan, heat the remaining milk with the sugar until nearly boiling.

  2. Stir in the cornflour and chocolate mixture, and keep stirring until it thickens.

  3. Pour into a wetted mold and let it cool.

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. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Chocolate + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and milk 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

Cornflour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set custard as it cooks.
Powdered chocolate
Gives the dish its chocolate flavour and colour.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornflour thickens.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the chocolate.

The step that matters

Stir in the cornflour and chocolate mixture, and keep stirring until it thickens.. Cornflour starch only thickens fully when heated while stirred; stopping early leaves a thin mixture, and stirring keeps the starch evenly dispersed so it does not form lumps.

“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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