Why it works: Almond and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,679 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Blanc-manger
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the almond milk
Blanch the almonds and pound them finely.
Dilute the pounded almonds with cold water and strain through a cloth, pressing out the liquid.
Make the mixture
Mix the almond milk with the pounded sugar and a bit of zest.
After 15 minutes, mix in the dissolved gelatin.
Pass the mixture through a fine sieve into a sugar pan.
Set and serve
Set the pan on ice and stir until it begins to thicken slightly.
Pour the mixture into a cylinder mold set in a basin of crushed ice.
After 1 hour, the mixture should be set.
To serve, dip the mold in warm water and turn the blanc-manger out onto a cold dish.
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.
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Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together15,679 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Almonds
- Provide the base flavour and body of the almond milk that the dessert is built on.
- Gelatine
- Sets the liquid mixture so it holds its shape when turned out of the mold.
- Pounded sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the flavour of the almond milk.
- Cold water
- Dilutes the pounded almonds to extract their milk for the base.
The step that matters
Stir on ice until it begins to thicken slightly. Gelatine sets as it cools, so the mixture must thicken just enough to hold suspended ingredients evenly. Cooling too far or unevenly before pouring can cause lumps or a grainy, uneven set.
“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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