Skip to main content
Dessert

Cornflour Blanc-mange

A sweet custard made with cornflour, milk, lemon rind, sugar, and butter, set in a mold and served with jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cornflour Blanc-mange

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the blanc-mange

  1. Mix the cornflour with a little milk to form a smooth cream.

  2. Boil the remaining milk with the lemon rind.

  3. Pour the hot milk onto the cornflour mixture, stirring well.

  4. Add the butter and sugar, then return to the saucepan.

  5. Boil for ten minutes, stirring constantly.

  6. Remove the lemon rind and pour into a mold.

Serve

  1. Once cold, turn out and serve with jam or marmalade.

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

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

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Cornflour
Starch that swells in hot liquid and thickens the milk into a set custard as it cools.
Milk
Liquid that the cornflour thickens, providing the body and moisture of the blanc-mange.
Butter
Fat that adds richness and a smoother, softer mouthfeel to the set dessert.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the blanc-mange and balances the mild flavour of the milk.

The step that matters

Boiling for ten minutes while stirring constantly. The cornflour starch granules must fully swell and cook to thicken the mixture properly. Constant stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the base of the pan, and the thickened custard then sets firm as it cools.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes