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Dessert

Fruit Blanc Mange

A fruit custard thickened with corn starch, served chilled with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Fruit Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fruit juice

  1. Stew the fresh or canned fruit and strain off the juice.

  2. Sweeten the juice to taste and heat it in a double boiler until it boils.

Thicken and set

  1. Stir in the corn-starch mixed with a little cold water.

  2. Continue stirring until cooked, then pour into molds that have been wet with cold water.

  3. Set aside to cool and serve with cream 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  3. Corn + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn-starch
Thickens the fruit juice into a set, sliceable custard as it cooks and gels.
Fruit juice
Provides the main fruit flavour and liquid that the starch thickens.
Fresh or canned fruit
Supplies the fruit flavour that is carried into the juice.

The step that matters

Continue stirring until cooked. Cornstarch must be stirred while it heats and cooked fully; undercooked starch stays chalky and will not thicken to a proper set, while stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the bottom of the double boiler.

“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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