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Dessert

American Blancmange

A sweet custard dessert made with Brazil nuts, eggs, flour, sugar, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Brazil nut and flour share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

American Blancmange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the nut infusion

  1. Peel and pound the Brazil nuts to a soft paste, adding ½ cup water while pounding.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 2 hours to extract the flavor.

Make the blancmange

  1. Beat the eggs and mix them with the Oswego flour.

  2. Dissolve the sugar in 1 pint of new milk and add the nut paste.

  3. Simmer for 5 minutes, then let it stand off the heat for 5 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture into the eggs, stirring quickly as the milk is added.

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. Brazil nut + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together43 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Set with gentle heat to give the blancmange its firm, tender structure.
Oswego flour
Its starch thickens the liquid as it heats, giving body.
New milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that carries the other flavors and moisture.
Brazil nuts
Their paste adds nutty aroma and flavor, plus some richness and body.
Loaf sugar
Provides sweetness that balances the nut and egg flavors.

The step that matters

Straining the nut mixture into the eggs. Adding hot liquid to eggs can curdle them. Pouring steadily while stirring quickly spreads the heat evenly, so the eggs warm gently and thicken smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the brazil nut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Milletfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Brazil nutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, sugar, milk. 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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