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Dessert

Oatmeal Blanc-mange

A custard-like dessert made by cooking oat flour in milk, sweetened with sugar and served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Oatmeal Blanc-mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a pot, bring 1 quart of milk to a boil and add ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt.

  2. In a small bowl, mix 2 heaping tablespoons of oat flour with a little cold water to form a paste.

  3. Stir the oat flour paste into the boiling milk and continue stirring for 20 minutes.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold and let it set.

  2. Serve warm or cold with sugar and cream.

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

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

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 gives the blanc-mange its body and creamy richness.
Oat flour
Its starch thickens the hot milk and helps the mixture set when cooled.

The step that matters

Stirring the oat flour paste into the boiling milk. Oat starch granules swell and thicken when heated, but they clump if added unevenly or left unstirred. Adding the smooth paste to boiling milk while stirring continuously keeps the starch dispersed for a smooth set.

“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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