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Dessert

Chocolate Blanc Mange

A chocolate mousse made with Irish moss, milk, chocolate, sugar, salt, boiling water, vanilla, served with sugar and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Chocolate Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the moss

  1. Soak the Irish moss in cold water to cover.

  2. Drain and pick over the moss.

  3. Add the milk to the moss.

  4. Cook in a double boiler for about 30 minutes.

Make the chocolate mixture

  1. Melt the Baker's chocolate.

  2. Mix in the sugar, salt, and boiling water gradually.

  3. Stir until smooth.

Combine and set

  1. Combine the chocolate mixture with the cooked milk mixture.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Add the vanilla.

  4. Strain again into small molds that have been dipped in cold water.

Serve

  1. Serve 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. 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. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Irish moss
Its natural gelling compounds thicken the milk and give the mousse its set and light body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the moss thickens into a creamy, soft-set mousse.
Baker's chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavour and richness that define the dessert.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the unsweetened chocolate.

The step that matters

Cook the moss in a double boiler. Irish moss releases its gelling compounds only through gentle, sustained heat. Too much heat or too little time leaves the mixture thin and unset, so keep it simmering gently for the full cooking time.

“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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