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Dessert

Blancmange a LA Eranqaise

A chilled almond milk dessert made with sweet and bitter almonds, sugar, isinglass, and set in ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,679 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Blancmange a LA Eranqaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch the sweet and bitter almonds, then drain and dry them with a napkin.

  2. Pound the almonds in a mortar, adding water gradually to prevent oiling.

  3. Heat the pounded almonds in a pan with filtered water.

  4. Spread a napkin over an oval dish and place the almonds on it.

  5. Gather the corners of the napkin and wring tightly to extract almond milk.

Make the blancmange

  1. Dissolve the crystallized sugar in the almond milk.

  2. Strain the mixture through a napkin and add the warm clarified isinglass.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mould placed in pounded ice.

  2. Let it set for 2 hours before serving.

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. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Provide the main almond milk base, giving the dessert its flavour and body.
Bitter almonds
Add a deeper almond aroma that balances the sweetness.
Crystallized sugar
Sweetens the almond milk and contributes to the final flavour.
Clarified isinglass
Acts as a gelling agent that lets the mixture set into a firm, sliceable form.

The step that matters

Wringing out the almond milk. Almonds pounded without enough gradual water can release oil, which separates and makes the milk greasy. Wringing firmly through a napkin extracts the liquid, but the mixture must then be strained so that fine solids do not cloud the set blancmange.

“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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