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Apricot Blanc-mange, or Crème Parisienne

A chilled apricot-flavored custard made with isinglass, milk, cream, sugar, and apricot jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Apricot Blanc-mange, or Crème Parisienne

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Dissolve the isinglass gently in the milk or thin cream and strain it through a folded muslin.

  2. Pour the mixture into a clean saucepan and add the sugar.

  3. Bring to a boil, then stir in the rich cream gradually by the spoonful.

  4. Mix smoothly with the apricot jam and stir until nearly cold.

Serve

  1. Mould the mixture for serving.

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

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

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

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

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + apricottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar 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

Isinglass
Gelatin-like setting agent that firms the mixture as it cools.
Apricot jam
Adds sweetness, fruit flavour and colour to the set cream.
Rich cream
Adds fat, which makes the set cream smooth and rich.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavour of the jam.

The step that matters

Stir the rich cream in gradually. Adding cream by the spoonful while the mixture is hot keeps it from curdling or separating, so the final set stays smooth.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

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