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Dessert

Semolina Blancmange

Semolina Blancmange is a sweet custard made from semolina, milk, sugar, egg yolk, and lemon essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Semolina and lemon work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Semolina Blancmange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the semolina in ½ cup of the milk for 10 minutes.

  2. Stir the soaked semolina into the remaining boiling milk.

Make the blancmange

  1. Add the sugar and stir over medium heat for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and quickly mix in the beaten egg yolk and lemon essence.

  3. Pour into a mold that has been dipped in water.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with stewed fruit or custard.

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. Semolina + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Semolina + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together351 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 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

Semolina
Its starch swells and thickens the hot milk, giving the blancmange its body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the semolina thickens and sets as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and a little extra thickening, smoothing the texture of the set dessert.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk can scramble when it meets very hot liquid. Removing the pan from the heat before quickly stirring in the beaten yolk lets it blend in smoothly and thicken gently instead of curdling into lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits less well

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