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Irish Moss Blanc Mange

A custard made by cooking Irish moss in milk, thickened, salted, and flavored.

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

Why it works: Milk and irish moss work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Irish Moss Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the Irish moss in several waters and pick it over carefully.

Make the blancmange

  1. Put the moss into a double boiler with the milk.

  2. Cook until it thickens when dropped on a cold plate.

  3. Add the salt, strain, and flavor as desired.

  4. Pour into a custard cup that has been rinsed with cold water.

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. Milk + irish mosstop 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
Supplies carrageenan, a gelling agent that thickens the milk and sets it as it cools.
Milk
Forms the liquid base, giving the blancmange its body, creaminess and mild flavor.

The step that matters

Cooking until it thickens on a cold plate. Irish moss thickens the milk through its carrageenan, which dissolves in hot liquid and sets into a gel as it cools. Stopping too early leaves the mixture thin and unable to set. Dropping a little onto a cold plate shows whether it will firm up.

“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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