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Dessert

Coffee Blanc Mange

A chilled French dessert made with milk, coffee, gelatin, eggs, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and coffee are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Coffee Blanc Mange

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the milk and soak the gelatine in it.

  2. Pour the milk mixture onto the well-whisked eggs.

  3. Add the sugar and the pint of coffee.

Set and serve

  1. Let it cool, then pour into moulds.

  2. Turn out and serve with whipped cream.

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 + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

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

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 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

Gelatine
Sets as it cools, giving the dessert a firm, sliceable body.
Eggs
Enrich the mixture and add body, giving a richer, softer texture.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that carries the gelatine and softens the coffee's bitterness.
Coffee
Provides the main flavour and aroma of the dessert.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the bitterness of the coffee.

The step that matters

Pouring the milk onto the eggs. Hot milk poured in quickly can scramble the eggs. Pouring slowly while whisking gently warms the eggs so they blend smoothly into the custard.

“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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