Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Marbled Blancmange

A sweet dessert made by mixing cornflour, sugar, milk, and cocoa, then setting in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and cocoa work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 643 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Chocolate Marbled Blancmange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the white blancmange

  1. Mix cornflour and sugar together in a bowl.

  2. Moisten the mixture with cold milk.

  3. Pour the cold milk over the remaining boiling milk.

  4. Return the mixture to the pan.

  5. Boil for 3 minutes.

Add the cocoa and mould

  1. Warm cocoa essence with an equal amount of sugar and just enough milk to moisten it in another pan.

  2. Pour the cocoa mixture into the white mixture.

  3. Stir the combined mixture lightly.

  4. Pour the mixture into a wetted mold.

  5. Turn out the mold when the mixture is cold.

Colour the white part

  1. Mix a little cochineal with 1 tablespoon of milk.

  2. Stir the cochineal mixture into the white blancmange.

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. Milk + cocoatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

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

  3. Sugar + cocoatop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together956 recipes

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

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

Cornflour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells and sets the blancmange into a firm, sliceable body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the cornflour thickens, giving the dessert its creamy, moist texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and balances the bitterness of the cocoa.
Cocoa essence
Supplies the chocolate flavour and brown colour that create the marbled effect.

The step that matters

Moistening the cornflour with cold milk. Dry starch clumps when it meets heat, so it must be smoothly mixed with cold milk before joining the boiling milk. Boiling for the full 3 minutes then swells the starch fully, so the blancmange thickens and sets properly.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Cocoathe original
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Peanutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

You might also like

Coconut PuddingCoconut Pudding26 recipesCoconut CakeCoconut Cake17 recipesCocoa Nut CandyCocoa Nut Candy11 recipesCocoa Nut PuddingCocoa Nut Pudding9 recipes