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Dessert

Fruit Blanc Mange

A fruit custard made by stewing fruit, thickening the juice with cornstarch, and setting it in molds to serve with cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Fruit Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit juice

  1. Stew the fresh or canned fruit.

  2. Strain off the juice.

  3. Sweeten the juice to taste.

Thicken the custard

  1. Heat the sweetened juice in a double boiler until boiling.

  2. Mix cornstarch with a little cold water.

  3. Stir the mixture into the boiling juice.

  4. Cook the mixture until thickened.

Mold and serve

  1. Pour the thickened mixture into molds that have been rinsed with cold water.

  2. Set the molds aside to cool.

  3. Serve the cooled custard with cream and sugar.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cornstarch
Thickens the hot juice into a set custard as it cooks and cools.
Fresh or canned fruit
Supplies the juice that becomes the custard and gives it its flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice to taste.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mild contrast to the fruit custard when served.

The step that matters

Stir the cornstarch into the boiling juice. Cornstarch must be fully heated in boiling liquid to swell and thicken. Adding it to juice that is not boiling, or stopping before it thickens, leaves a thin, starchy custard that will not set properly.

“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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