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Dessert

Cornflour Blancmange

A sweet custard made from cornflour, milk, butter, and optional sugar and flavouring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cornflour Blancmange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the blancmange

  1. Mix the cornflour with a little milk until smooth.

  2. Bring the remaining milk to a boil.

  3. Remove from heat and slowly pour the hot milk onto the cornflour mixture, stirring constantly.

  4. Add the butter and return to the heat.

  5. Boil for 10 minutes, stirring continuously.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into wet moulds and let cool.

  2. Once cold, turn out and serve plain or with fruit or jam.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Cornflour
Starch that swells in hot milk and thickens the mixture into a set, sliceable custard.
Milk
Liquid base that the starch thickens, giving the blancmange its creamy body.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a smoother, softer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Boiling the thickened mixture. Cornflour starch only thickens fully once the mixture reaches a boil, and continuous stirring stops the starch clumping or scorching on the base of the pan.

“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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