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Dessert

Farina Blanc Mange

A custard-like pudding made with flour, milk, eggs, sugar, lemon juice, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Farina Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wet the farina with a little cold milk and add the salt.

  2. Scald the remaining milk in a saucepan.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks and mix in the sugar.

  2. Stir the farina into the scalded milk and cook for 15 minutes, stirring often.

  3. Add the yolk mixture and boil for 2 minutes longer.

  4. Remove from heat, add the lemon juice, and fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Mold and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into molds that have been wet with cold water and set aside to cool.

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

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

  2. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Farina (in the method)
Starch that thickens the hot milk and gives the pudding its body as it cools.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the custard, while folded whites lighten the texture.
Milk
Liquid base that the farina thickens and that sets into the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the pudding.
Lemon juice
Acidity brightens the sweetness and balances the rich custard.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Beaten whites trap air that makes the pudding light. Vigorous stirring deflates that foam, so fold with a spatula in slow, wide strokes.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, milk, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk, cream. 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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