Skip to main content
Dessert

Rich Blancmange

A sweet dessert made from milk, sugar, lemon rind, almonds, gelatin, and cream, set in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Rich Blancmange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in some of the milk.

Make the mixture

  1. Boil the milk with the lemon rind, sugar, and blanched, pounded sweet almonds.

  2. Add the soaked gelatine to the mixture and stir until dissolved.

  3. Strain the mixture and let it cool.

Set

  1. Once cooled, fold in the cream and pour into a mold.

  2. Refrigerate until set.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable body as it cools.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, soft texture to the set dessert.
Sweet almonds
Contribute nutty flavour and body to the milk base once pounded and boiled.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the milk base and balances the richness of the cream.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatine. Gelatine must be fully dissolved into the warm mixture before cooling, because undissolved granules leave gritty specks and uneven setting. Straining afterward removes any remaining lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, almond, cream. 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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes