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Dessert

Coffee Blanc Mange

A chilled French dessert made with cream, gelatin, eggs, coffee, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Coffee Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in 1 cup of milk for 1 hour.

  2. Heat the milk to boiling point.

  3. Stir in the gelatine until dissolved.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs and sugar together.

  2. Beat in the coffee and add to the scalding milk.

  3. Return to the heat and warm through.

Finish

  1. Turn into a bowl and gently fold in the whipped egg whites.

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

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

  2. Cream + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the finished dessert.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid so the dessert holds its shape when chilled.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites lighten the texture when folded in.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and balances the bitterness of the coffee.
Strong coffee
Gives the dessert its main coffee flavour and aroma.

The step that matters

Return to the heat and warm through. Egg yolks thicken as they warm but can curdle or scramble if overheated. Warm gently, stirring, so the custard thickens smoothly and the gelatine stays fully dissolved in the mixture.

“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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