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Dessert

Cream Blanc Mange

A chilled gelatin-based dessert with cream, eggs, sugar, almond essence, and layers of sponge cake and jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cream Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Soak the gelatine in a little cold milk for 2 hours.

  2. Pour 2 cups of boiling milk over the gelatine and stir until dissolved.

  3. Add ½ cup of cream, the yolks of 2 eggs, sugar, and essence of almonds to taste.

  4. Stir over low heat until it thickens.

  5. Let it cool nearly.

Mould and set

  1. Wet a china mould with cold water.

  2. Drain the mould.

  3. Cover the bottom of the mould with the mixture.

  4. Add pieces of sponge cake and jam, keeping them in the middle.

  5. Pour the rest of the mixture over the sponge cake and jam.

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. Apricot + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Milk + apricottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the cream so it holds its shape when turned out of the mould.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the gelatine dissolves into and the custard is made from.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness through their proteins and fat.
Cream
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture and a softer set.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the flavour of the custard.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat until it thickens. Egg yolk proteins set when heated, so high heat can curdle the custard. Gentle heat and constant stirring thicken it smoothly.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

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