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Dessert

Arrowroot Blanc-mange

A sweetened milk dessert thickened with arrowroot, flavored with optional cinnamon or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Prepare the base

  1. If using, boil the cinnamon or vanilla in the milk before adding the arrowroot.

  2. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  3. In a bowl, mix the arrowroot with a little cold milk to make a smooth batter.

  4. Add the salt to the batter.

Make the blanc-mange

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

  2. Continue stirring over low heat for 3-4 minutes until thickened.

  3. Sweeten with sugar and add flavoring as desired.

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

Set and serve

  1. Once completely cool, turn out the blanc-mange and 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 hot milk into a smooth, glossy set as it cooks and cools.
Milk
Forms the body of the dessert and, as it cools, sets with the starch into a soft custard-like texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the mild flavor of the milk and starch.

The step that matters

Stirring the batter into the boiling milk. Arrowroot starch must be fully dispersed in cold liquid first, then added to hot milk while stirring constantly. Otherwise it clumps into lumps that cannot be smoothed out, and the mixture may thicken unevenly.

“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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