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Dessert

Cornfllour Blancmange

A sweet, thickened milk dessert made with cornflour, milk, sugar, and lemon rind or cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cornfllour Blancmange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk with the lemon rind.

  2. Blend the cornflour with a little cold milk until smooth.

  3. Pour the boiling milk onto the cornflour mixture and return to the saucepan.

  4. Boil gently for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

  5. Remove the lemon rind and add the sugar.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into rinsed darioles or a mold.

  2. Once firm, loosen the edges, shake, and turn out onto a dish.

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. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Arrowroot + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

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

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

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

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

Cornflour or arrowroot
Thickens the milk into a smooth, sliceable set as its starch gelatinises when boiled.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into a creamy set.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the set texture slightly.

The step that matters

Stirring while boiling the mixture. Cornflour starch can scorch on the base of the pan and form lumps if not stirred constantly while the mixture boils. Gentle, constant stirring keeps it smooth and ensures the starch fully thickens.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Arrowrootthe original
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, lemon. 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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