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Dessert

Cherry Blanc-mange

A chilled gelatin dessert made with cherries, sherry wine, sugar, lemon juice, and served with whipped cream and fruit cake.

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 ↓

Cherry Blanc-mange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in sherry wine.

Make the blanc-mange

  1. Heat the cherries and soaked gelatine together, adding sugar to taste.

  2. Flavor with lemon juice and some of the cherry peel.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold that has been rinsed in cold water.

  4. Once cold, serve with whipped cream and fruit cake.

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. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  5. Sherry + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

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

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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable dessert with a soft wobble.
Cherries
Provide the main fruit flavor, color and body of the dessert.
Sherry wine
Softens the gelatine before heating and adds a mellow, aromatic note.
Sugar
Sweetens the cherries and balances their natural tartness.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into a mold that has been rinsed in cold water. Gelatine must be fully dissolved and the mixture cooled slightly before pouring, or it may set unevenly or stick. A cold-rinsed mold helps the set dessert release cleanly when turned out.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, wine, sugar, 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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