Skip to main content
Dessert

Blanc-Manger

A sweet dessert made from calf's feet stock, sugar, almonds, lemon zest, and coriander seed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and coriander match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,498 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Blanc-Manger

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Cleave the calves' feet in half and remove the large bones.

  2. Soak and blanch the feet.

  3. Place the feet in a pot with water and bring to a boil. Skim the surface.

  4. Cook for 2–3 hours.

  5. Remove the fat and strain the stock through a wet cloth.

Make the flavoured syrup

  1. Combine sugar, a little water, lemon zest, and coriander seed in a pan.

  2. Let the mixture infuse for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the coriander and lemon.

Combine and set

  1. Mix the sugar with the beaten almonds.

  2. Strain the mixture several times.

  3. Add enough stock to achieve a delicate consistency.

  4. Pour the mixture into small pots, molds, or lemon/orange skins without adding salt.

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. Lemon + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,498 recipes

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

  2. Almond + coriandertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  3. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Calves' feet
Release gelatin into the stock, giving the finished dessert its body and ability to set.
Sweet almonds
Provide the main flavour and creamy body of the almond milk base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the savoury stock and almond flavour.
Bitter almonds
Add a deeper, aromatic almond note in small amounts.

The step that matters

Skim and strain the stock. Skimming removes foam and impurities, and removing fat and straining through a wet cloth yields a clear, clean-tasting stock that sets smoothly.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Cashew nutfits about as well
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, coriander. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes