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Dessert

Corn Starch Blancmange

A sweet custard made with corn starch, milk, isinglass, almonds, and sugar, set in molds and served with almond slips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Corn Starch Blancmange

Ingredients

Directions

Thicken the milk

  1. Dissolve the corn starch in a small amount of milk.

  2. Heat 1 pint of milk until nearly boiling.

  3. Stir in the corn starch mixture.

  4. Boil for 3 minutes.

  5. Flavor with lemon or vanilla as desired.

Prepare the isinglass

  1. Break the isinglass into small pieces.

  2. Soak the isinglass pieces in 1 pint of boiling water overnight.

  3. The next morning, add 1 quart of milk and boil until the isinglass is dissolved.

  4. Strain the mixture.

Set and serve

  1. Add the pounded almonds and sweeten with loaf sugar.

  2. Pour into molds and let cool.

  3. Decorate with thin slips of almonds.

  4. Serve with syllabub or whipped 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. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Corn + almondtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together485 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Corn + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Swells when heated in milk, thickening the blancmange to a soft body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens and the isinglass sets.
Isinglass
Sets the mixture as it cools, giving it a firm, wobbly structure.
Blanched almonds
Add nutty flavor and a little texture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring the corn starch into hot milk and boiling it. Starch granules swell and thicken only when hot and well mixed. Stirring prevents lumps and scorching, and boiling for the full time fully cooks the starch so it sets smoothly rather than tasting raw and floury.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, milk, sugar, cinnamon, almond):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, milk, sugar, cinnamon, almond. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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