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Dessert

Cornstarch Blanc Mange

A sweet, thickened milk dessert made with cornstarch, sugar, lemon juice, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cornstarch Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat 1 pint of sweet milk in a saucepan.

  2. In another pint of cold milk, mix cornstarch and sugar until smooth.

  3. Once the first pint of milk is hot, pour in the cold milk mixture and stir until thick and lump-free.

  4. Remove from heat, add lemon juice, and fold in beaten egg whites until well combined.

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 + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, sliceable pudding as it heats and gelatinizes.
Egg whites
Add airy lightness and structure when beaten and folded into the warm pudding.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornstarch thickens into the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the flavor of the thickened pudding.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Stir the cornstarch mixture into the hot milk until thick. Cornstarch must be fully mixed into a smooth slurry and kept stirring as it heats; otherwise it clumps, and it only thickens properly once the mixture reaches a simmer.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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