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Dessert

Cornflour Blancmange

A sweet dessert made by boiling milk, adding cornflour, sugar, flavoring, butter, and setting in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cornflour Blancmange

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil 2 cups of milk.

  2. Reserve ½ cup of the milk to wet the cornflour.

  3. Add flavoring and 1 tablespoon of sugar to the boiling milk.

  4. Pour the boiling milk onto the wetted cornflour, stirring well.

  5. Boil the mixture until it leaves the sides of the pan, about 10 minutes.

  6. Stir in a pat of butter and pour into a water-steeped mold.

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. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

Cornflour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set custard-like blancmange as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornflour thickens into a creamy dessert.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the milk base.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished set dessert.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornflour into the boiling milk. Cornflour clumps if it hits hot liquid dry or unevenly. Wetting it first with cold milk and stirring well while pouring the boiling milk in keeps it smooth, so the starch can thicken the mixture evenly.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Cocoafits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Hazelnutfits less well

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

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