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Dessert

Irish Moss Blanc-Mange

A chilled dessert made from Irish moss, milk, vanilla, and salt, served with banana slices, sugar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Irish moss and vanilla share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 58 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Irish Moss Blanc-Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the moss

  1. Soak the Irish moss in cold water for 15 minutes, then drain and pick over.

Make the blancmange

  1. Add the moss to the milk and cook in a double boiler for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture, add salt and vanilla, then re-strain.

  3. Dip individual molds in cold water, fill with the mixture, and chill.

Serve

  1. Turn out onto a glass dish, surround with thin slices of banana, and place a slice on each mold.

  2. Serve with sugar and cream.

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. Irish moss + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Irish moss + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Irish moss
Seaweed gel that thickens the milk and lets the blancmange set firm when chilled.
Milk
Forms the body of the blancmange and, with the moss, sets into a creamy custard.
Vanilla
Adds aroma that rounds out the mild flavour of the milk.

The step that matters

Cook the moss and milk in a double boiler. Gentle indirect heat lets the moss release its gelling compounds without scorching the milk, which could give a burnt taste and uneven setting.

“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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