Why it works: Milk and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Blanc-mange
Ingredients
Directions
Make the milk base
In a saucepan, combine 1 quart of milk, 3 ounces of loaf sugar, and 1 inch of stick cinnamon or the peel of 1/4 lemon.
Heat the saucepan over medium heat until the mixture boils.
Thicken
In a bowl, mix 4 tablespoons of cornflour with 1 tablespoon of cold milk until smooth.
Once the milk mixture is boiling, quickly stir in the cornflour mixture and boil for 2 minutes, stirring continuously to prevent lumps.
Mould and serve
Rinse a quart basin or mold with cold water.
Remove the cinnamon or lemon peel from the mixture, pour it into the basin, and set aside to cool.
Once the blanc-mange is completely cool, turn it out onto a dish and serve.
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.
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that thickens into the smooth body of the dessert.
- Cornflour
- Starch that swells when boiled with liquid, thickening the milk and setting it as it cools.
- Loaf sugar
- Sweetens the dessert.
- Cinnamon or lemon peel
- Infuses the milk with aroma while it heats, then is removed before setting.
The step that matters
Stirring the cornflour into boiling milk. Cornflour must be smoothed in cold milk first, then stirred in quickly while the milk boils and kept moving. Boiling for two minutes cooks the starch fully so the mixture thickens evenly without lumps and sets firmly once cool.
“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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