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Dessert

Irish Moss Blanc-Mange

A sweet custard made from Irish moss, milk, vanilla, and sea salt, served in cups or eggshells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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

  1. Soak the Irish moss in cold water for 15 minutes.

  2. Pick over and wash the moss, then tie it in a lace bag.

  3. Place the bag in a double boiler with the milk.

Make the blanc-mange

  1. Boil until the milk thickens when dropped on a cool plate.

  2. Add the salt, then strain and flavor the mixture.

Mould and serve

  1. Mould into small cups or egg-shells.

  2. To prepare egg-shells, break off a piece as large as a ten-cent piece, pour out the egg, rinse the shells, and stand them upright in a pan of meal.

  3. Fill the shells with the blanc-mange.

  4. Serve with sugar and cream, or with apple or grape jelly, or place half a peach or any candied fruit in the bottom of the cup before filling.

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. 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
Seaweed that releases gelling compounds into the hot milk, so the mixture sets as it cools.
Milk
Liquid base that the moss thickens into a soft, sliceable set dessert.
Vanilla
Adds aroma that rounds out the mild, creamy flavor of the milk.

The step that matters

Boil until the milk thickens on a cool plate. Irish moss must be heated in the milk long enough to release its gelling compounds. Underheated mixtures stay runny and will not set when cooled, so the cool-plate test checks that the milk has thickened before moulding.

“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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