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Dessert

Cornstarch Blanc Mange

A custard made from milk, corn starch, sugar, lemon rind, optionally colored with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Cornstarch Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the blanc mange

  1. In a double boiler, combine the milk and sugar, then heat until boiling.

  2. Mix the corn starch with a little cold milk, then stir it into the boiling milk.

  3. Cook for 1-2 minutes, then remove from heat and take out the lemon rind.

  4. For a yellow color, add the yolks of 2 eggs before cooling.

  5. Pour the mixture into molds and let cool.

Serve

  1. Once cold, turn out from the molds and serve with sweetened cream.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a firm, sliceable custard as it gelatinizes on heating and cooling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into a smooth, creamy set.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and softens the flavor of the milk.
Egg yolks
Add richness and a yellow color to the otherwise white dessert.

The step that matters

Stirring the starch into the boiling milk. Starch dropped into hot liquid without first being mixed with cold milk clumps and will not thicken evenly. Cooking for 1-2 minutes after it boils fully activates the starch so the custard sets smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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