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Dessert

Hominy or Semolina Blancmange

A sweet dessert made by cooking hominy or semolina in milk, sweetened with sugar, then set in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Semolina and sugar work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 351 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Hominy or Semolina Blancmange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rinse a clean saucepan with cold water, then pour in the milk.

  2. Sprinkle the hominy or semolina and salt into the milk.

Cook

  1. Stir until it boils, then reduce heat and cook gently for about one hour, until soft and milk is absorbed.

Set and serve

  1. Sweeten to taste, pour into a wet mold, and let cool.

  2. Turn out the blancmange and serve with stewed fruit.

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. Semolina + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together351 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Semolina + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together316 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk 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

Hominy or semolina
Thickens the milk as its starch swells and softens during gentle cooking, giving the blancmange body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the grain absorbs and that sets into a soft, creamy body as it cools.
Lump sugar
Adds sweetness, added after cooking so it is adjusted to taste.

The step that matters

Gentle cooking until the milk is absorbed. Cooking gently keeps the milk from scorching on the base of the pan and lets the grain swell fully. Stopping too early leaves the blancmange thin and grainy, so it may not set firmly when cooled.

“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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