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Dessert

Blanc Mange

A green gelatin dessert made with sweet and bitter almonds, spinach juice, brandy, and isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 352 recipes mention both. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatin

  1. Dissolve the isinglass in a small amount of water.

  2. Add sweet and bitter almonds, spinach juice, and brandy to the dissolved isinglass.

  3. Heat the mixture over low heat until almost boiling, then strain through a fine sieve.

  4. When it thickens, pour it into a melon mold and refrigerate overnight.

Serve

  1. To serve, turn it out and garnish with blanched almonds and flowers.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Almond + spinachtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together352 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Almond + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,456 recipes

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

  3. Spinach + ricetop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together518 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Almond + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together1,969 recipes

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

  5. Brandy + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Isinglass
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly gel as it cools.
Sweet almonds
Provide the main almond flavour and body to the gelatin.
Bitter almonds
Add a stronger, more pronounced almond aroma to the gelatin.
Whites of 4 eggs
Listed in the record, but the steps do not say how they are used.

The step that matters

Straining through a fine sieve. Heating must stop just short of boiling, and straining removes almond solids and bits so the gel sets clear and smooth. Overheating can weaken the setting power of isinglass.

Flavor stand-ins for the spinach

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

  1. Arrowrootbetter flavor fit
  2. Sweet potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Beetrootabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, brandy, egg, rice, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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