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Dessert

Chocolate Marbled Blancmange

A sweet dessert made by mixing cornflour, sugar, milk, and cocoa, then setting in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cocoa work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 643 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Chocolate Marbled Blancmange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Mix the cornflour and sugar together in a bowl.

  2. Moisten the mixture with 1 cup of cold milk.

Cook the white blancmange

  1. Pour the mixture over the remaining 3 cups of boiling milk.

  2. Return the mixture to the pan and boil for 3 minutes.

Make the cocoa marbling

  1. In another pan, combine cocoa essence with ¼ cup sugar and enough milk to moisten it.

  2. Warm the cocoa mixture.

  3. Pour the cocoa mixture into the white mixture and stir lightly.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a wetted mold.

  2. Turn out when cold.

  3. Mix a little cochineal with 1 tablespoon of milk and stir the cochineal mixture into the white blancmange.

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 + cocoatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + cocoatop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together956 recipes

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

Sugar and milk 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

Cornflour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells and sets the blancmange when cooled.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornflour thickens into a creamy set dessert.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to both the white and chocolate layers.
Cocoa essence
Gives the darker layer its chocolate flavour and colour for the marbled effect.

The step that matters

Moisten the cornflour with cold milk first. Cornflour mixed straight into hot liquid clumps. Making a smooth paste with cold milk lets the starch disperse evenly, so it thickens the milk smoothly when heated.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Cocoathe original
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Peanutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk. 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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