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Dessert

Lemon Blanc Mange

A lemon custard dessert made with milk, eggs, ground rice, gelatine, sugar, and lemon zest and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lemon Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Make a custard with the yolks and 1 pint of milk.

  2. Pour the custard into a basin.

Make the blanc

  1. In a saucepan, combine half the remaining milk, ground rice, butter, lemon rind, and 3 oz sugar.

  2. Boil until the mixture thickens, stirring occasionally.

  3. Add this mixture to the basin with the custard.

  4. In another saucepan, combine gelatine with the rest of the milk and 3 oz sugar.

  5. Mix everything together.

  6. When cold, stir in the strained lemon juice.

Set

  1. Pour into a mold and let it set until needed.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and add richness and structure.
Ground rice
Thickens the mixture as it boils, giving body to the set dish.
Gelatine
Sets the mixture so it holds its shape when cold.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and thickened mixture, adding richness.
Lemons
Rind and juice provide the lemon aroma and tartness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the lemon juice.

The step that matters

When cold, stir in the strained lemon juice.. Acid can curdle or thin dairy and weaken gelatine setting if added while the mixture is hot. Letting it cool first keeps the blanc smooth and lets it set firmly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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