Skip to main content
Dessert

Cornstarch Blancmange

A chilled dessert made from milk, sugar, cinnamon, cornstarch, bright red jelly, and lemon-flavored sweetened cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cornstarch Blancmange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the blancmange

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add sugar, salt, cinnamon, and cornstarch moistened with cold milk.

  3. Boil for 4 minutes, stirring constantly.

Mould and serve

  1. Rinse desired cups with cold water and nearly fill them with the mixture.

  2. Let the cups stand until cold, then turn them upside down on saucers.

  3. Top each with ½ teaspoon of bright red jelly.

  4. Pour sweetened cream flavored with lemon extract around the blancmange.

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. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the milk as it boils, giving the blancmange its firm, sliceable body.
Milk
Forms the base of the blancmange and supplies moisture and creamy body.
Sugar
Sweetens the blancmange and softens its flavor.
Sweetened cream
Adds richness and a smooth, cool contrast around the set blancmange.

The step that matters

Boil for 4 minutes, stirring constantly. Cornstarch only thickens fully once its granules swell and gelatinize in boiling liquid. Stirring prevents scorching and lumps, and the mixture must reach a full boil to set properly when cooled.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, sugar, cream. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes