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Dessert

Blancmange of Flowers

A sweet dessert made by infusing flower leaves in boiling water, sweetened, and colored with cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sugar and coffee are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,344 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Blancmange of Flowers

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Infuse the flower leaves in boiling water for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture and sweeten to taste.

  3. Add cochineal for coloring.

  4. For coffee or tea blancmange, substitute the flower essence with ½ cup of coffee or tea essence.

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 + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flower leaves
Infused in boiling water to give the blancmange its main flavour.
Cochineal
Adds red colour to the finished blancmange.

“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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