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Dessert

Cream Blancmange Without Cream

A milk-based dessert thickened with arrowroot and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and arrowroot work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 817 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Cream Blancmange Without Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a clean saucepan, bring the milk to a boil with salt and sugar.

  2. Mix the arrowroot with cold water in a bowl.

  3. Pour the boiling milk over the arrowroot while stirring, then return to the saucepan.

  4. Stir continuously until the mixture thickens, then remove from heat.

Finish and set

  1. Beat the egg yolks and stir them into the thickened milk.

  2. Stir until thick again, then pour into a jug.

  3. Once partly cool, transfer to a glass 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. Milk + arrowroottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

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

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base and gives the blancmange its creamy body.
Arrowroot
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the set dessert its smooth texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and further thicken the custard when stirred into the hot milk.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the dessert and adds to its smooth, rounded flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the thickened milk. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if added to very hot liquid without care. Stirring continuously while adding them keeps the custard smooth and lets it thicken evenly.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

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

More blancmange recipes

Arrowroot 42Rice 24Chocolate 15Cornstarch 14Lemon 14Almond 13 See all 129 →

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