Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓
Fruit Blanc Mange
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit juice
Stew the fresh or canned fruit until soft.
Strain off the juice and sweeten to taste.
Place the juice in a double boiler and bring to a boil.
Thicken and set
Mix cornstarch with a little cold water and stir into the boiling juice.
Continue stirring until the mixture thickens.
Pour into molds that have been wet with cold water and let cool.
Serve
Serve with cream and sugar.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cornstarch
- Thickens the hot juice into a gel-like body as it cooks and then sets when cooled.
- Fruit
- Provides the main flavour and colour of the dessert.
The step that matters
Continue stirring until the mixture thickens. Cornstarch must be stirred while the juice is boiling so the starch granules swell evenly and gelatinize; stopping early or leaving it unstirred can leave lumps or a thin, unset dessert.
“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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