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Dessert

Blancmange

A sweet dessert made from rice flour, milk, cream, sugar, flavouring, and gelatin, set into a firm custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Blancmange

Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Blancmange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the rice flour with cold milk to form a paste.

  2. Boil the remaining milk with sugar and flavouring.

Thicken and set

  1. Add the paste to the boiling mixture and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring frequently.

  2. You can either boil the cream with the mixture or add it off the heat and beat it in.

  3. Mould the mixture and allow it to set.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Fine rice flour
Its starch swells and thickens the milk as it simmers, giving the blancmange its body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice starch thickens into a smooth custard-like mixture.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, silkier mouthfeel to the set dessert.
Sheet gelatine
Sets the thickened mixture so it holds its shape when moulded and cooled.

The step that matters

Simmering the rice paste. Rice starch only swells and thickens fully once the mixture reaches a boil. Stirring frequently during the 15 minutes keeps the flour from settling, clumping, or scorching on the base of the pan.

“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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