Skip to main content
Dessert

Fruit Blanc Mange

A fruit dessert made by stewing fruit, thickening the juice with cornstarch, and serving in molds with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Fruit Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Stew the fresh or canned fruit and strain off the juice.

  2. Sweeten the juice to taste.

Thicken

  1. Heat the juice in a double boiler until it boils.

  2. Stir in ¼ cup cornstarch mixed with a little cold water.

  3. Continue stirring until thickened.

Mold and serve

  1. Pour into molds that have been wet with cold water and let cool.

  2. Serve with cream and sugar.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Fruit
Provides the main flavour and colour of the dessert through its juice.
Cornstarch
Thickens the hot juice into a set, sliceable gel as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice to balance the tartness of the fruit.

The step that matters

Continue stirring until thickened. Cornstarch must be stirred while the liquid heats, and kept at a boil long enough, for its starch granules to swell and gelatinize. Stopping early leaves a thin, runny result that will not set firmly in the molds.

“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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes