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Dessert

Chocolate Blanc Mange

A chocolate custard set with gelatin, made from milk, eggs, chocolate, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Chocolate Blanc Mange

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mousse base

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it boils.

  2. In a bowl, mix the soaked gelatine, grated chocolate, eggs, and vanilla extract with a little milk until smooth.

  3. Add the mixture to the boiling milk and stir well.

  4. Boil for 8 minutes, stirring constantly.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into moulds and let it cool.

  2. Serve with cream or 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Egg and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 27,347 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 mixture into a soft, wobbly structure as it cools.
Eggs
Thicken the mixture and add richness and structure to the mousse.
Grated chocolate
Gives the mousse its chocolate flavour and a deeper color.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that the gelatine and eggs set into.

The step that matters

Stirring constantly while boiling. Eggs can scramble and curdle if they are heated unevenly or left unstirred, which leaves lumps instead of a smooth custard-like base. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the egg proteins from clumping.

“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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