Skip to main content
Dessert

Mont Blanc

A gelatin dessert made with lemon rind, sugar, egg whites, and custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Mont Blanc

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon foam

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in 1 pint of boiling water.

  2. Add the grated lemon rind and sugar, stirring until combined.

  3. Before the mixture stiffens, fold in the beaten egg whites.

Serve

  1. Serve with custard made from the yolks of eggs and 1 pint of boiling milk, sweetened and flavored with vanilla.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 the dissolved mixture so the foam holds its shape when chilled.
Whites of eggs
Whipped into a stiff froth, they trap air and give the dessert its light, airy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the foam and helps balance the sharpness of the lemon.
Grated lemon rind
Adds bright citrus aroma and flavor to the foam.
Custard
Provides a rich, creamy sauce that contrasts with the light foam.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites before the mixture stiffens. Gelatine begins to set as it cools, so if the mixture thickens too far before folding, the whites cannot be blended in evenly and the airy structure collapses or becomes lumpy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More mont blanc recipes

dessert 3Potato 3 See all 5 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes