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Dessert

Strawberry Blanc Mange

A chilled strawberry dessert thickened with corn starch, served with cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Strawberry Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the strawberry juice

  1. Stew the ripe strawberries and strain off the juice.

  2. Sweeten the juice to taste.

Thicken and set

  1. Place the juice over heat and stir in 2 tablespoons of corn starch mixed with water for every 1 pint of juice.

  2. Stir constantly until cooked.

  3. Pour into wet molds and set aside to cool.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream and sugar, and scatter fresh strawberries around if desired.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  3. Corn + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the strawberry juice into a sliceable, set dessert as it cooks.
Ripe strawberries
Provide the main strawberry flavour and colour of the juice.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mild contrast to the tart fruit.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and balances the natural tartness of the strawberries.

The step that matters

Stirring constantly until cooked. Cornstarch settles and scorches on the bottom of the pan if left unstirred. Starch granules must be heated fully while stirred so they swell and thicken the liquid evenly without 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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