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Dessert

Arrowroot Blanc-mange

A sweet, thickened milk dessert made with arrowroot, sugar, and optional citrus or spice flavorings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Arrowroot Blanc-mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the blanc-mange

  1. Bring 1 quart of milk to a boil.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix 1 ounce of arrowroot with a little cold milk to make a smooth batter.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon of salt to the batter.

  4. Once the milk is boiling, stir the batter into the milk.

  5. Continue stirring over low heat for 3 to 4 minutes until thickened.

  6. Sweeten with double refined sugar and add lemon extract or orange-flower water to taste.

  7. For extra flavor, boil a stick of cinnamon or a vanilla bean in the milk before adding the arrowroot.

  8. Dip a mold in cold water, then strain the mixture into the mold.

  9. Let it cool completely before unmolding.

Serve

  1. Serve with currant jelly or jam.

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. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Arrowroot + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together166 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Arrowroot
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set custard as its starch swells when heated.
Milk
Forms the body of the blanc-mange and sets into a creamy, tender texture as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the mild flavor of the milk and arrowroot.

The step that matters

Stir the batter into the boiling milk, then keep stirring over low heat. Arrowroot starch must be fully dispersed in cold liquid first, or it clumps. Stirring while it heats keeps the starch evenly distributed, and it thickens as the granules swell and gelatinize. Stopping early leaves the mixture thin.

“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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