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Dessert

Jelly or Blancmange for Invalids

A gelatinous or custard-like dish made from veal bone broth, wine, lemon peel, milk, and sugar, suitable for invalids.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Laurel and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 691 recipes. Both carry cinnamyl acetate, which smells sweet aromatic, cinnamon. The science ↓

Jelly or Blancmange for Invalids

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Scrape all the meat from the veal bones.

  2. Stew the bones in 2 quarts of water for 4 to 5 hours.

  3. Once cold, skim off all fat and sediment.

Flavor and finish

  1. Melt the stock and flavor with wine and lemon-peel.

  2. For blancmange, reduce the stock further and add milk flavored with laurel-leaf and lemon-peel.

  3. Add a little wine or brandy for improved flavor.

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. Laurel + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together691 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + laureltop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,239 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Bones of a knuckle of veal
Provide gelatin and savory body that lets the stock set into a jelly as it cools.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body, forming the blancmange when the stock is reduced and combined.
Home-made wine
Adds aroma and depth of flavor to the stock.

The step that matters

Skim off all fat and sediment once cold. Fat and sediment left in the stock make it cloudy and greasy. Chilling lets fat solidify on the surface so it can be lifted off cleanly, leaving a clear, smooth jelly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, wine, milk, laurel, sugar, cinnamon):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, wine, milk, laurel, sugar, cinnamon. 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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