Skip to main content
Dessert

Irish Moss Blanc Mange

A sweet pudding made from Irish moss, milk, water, and vanilla, served cold with cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Irish Moss Blanc Mange

Why it works: Irish moss and vanilla share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 58 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Irish Moss Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the moss

  1. Pick over and wash the Irish Moss, then soak it until softened.

  2. Cook the moss in water until very soft and gelatinous.

  3. Strain the moss and slowly add boiling milk while stirring constantly.

Set and serve

  1. Return the mixture to a double boiler and cook until it slightly hardens when dropped on a cool plate.

  2. Flavor with vanilla and pour into molds.

  3. Serve cold with cream and sugar.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Irish moss + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  3. Irish moss + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Irish moss
A seaweed that releases gel-forming carrageenan, so the pudding sets firm when cooled.
Milk
Forms the body of the pudding and gives it a creamy, soft texture.

The step that matters

Cooking in the double boiler until it slightly hardens. Heat must be gentle and the test is a drop on a cool plate. Overcooking can make the set too stiff, while undercooking leaves the pudding too loose to hold its shape in the molds.

“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

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes