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Dessert

Blanc Mange

A gelatin dessert made with milk, sugar, vanilla, and gelatin, set in a mould and served with powdered sugar and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and milk 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 ↓

Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 2 hours.

Make the milk mixture

  1. Heat the milk to boiling in a double boiler or a tin pail in hot water.

  2. Add the soaked gelatine and sugar to the milk. Stir for 10 minutes over heat.

  3. Strain the mixture through a thin muslin bag into a mould that has been wet with cold water. Flavor the mixture.

Set and unmould

  1. Set it in a cold place to form.

  2. Dip the mould in hot water for a moment. Gently press the sides with your fingers. Invert onto a glass or china dish.

Serve

  1. Serve with powdered sugar and cream.

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. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 milk into a firm, sliceable dessert as it cools.
Milk
Forms the body of the dessert and gives it a creamy, soft texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and adds body to the set mixture.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture into a wet mould. Straining removes any undissolved gelatine lumps so the set dessert is smooth. Wetting the mould with cold water helps the set dessert release cleanly when inverted.

“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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