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Dessert

Arrowroot Blanc-mange

A dessert made from arrowroot, milk, and water, thickened into a smooth custard and served with currant jelly or lemon juice and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,475 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Arrowroot Blanc-mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the blancmange

  1. Mix the arrowroot with enough water to form a smooth paste.

  2. Add milk to the mixture and bring to a boil, stirring until it thickens.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold and let it cool until set.

Serve

  1. Serve with currant jelly or lemon juice and sugar.

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. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Arrowroot + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Arrowroot + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Arrowroot
Thickens the milk into a smooth, sliceable set when heated and cooled.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and creamy body of the blancmange.

The step that matters

Stirring while the mixture comes to a boil. Arrowroot starch can clump if it is added to hot liquid without steady stirring, and it thickens quickly once boiling, so the mixture must be stirred to keep it smooth.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, currant. 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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