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Dessert

Corn-flour Blancmange

A sweet custard made from milk, sugar, cornflour, and vanilla, set in a mould.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Corn-flour Blancmange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a clean saucepan, combine the milk and sugar.

  2. Mix the corn-flour with a little cold milk to form a smooth paste.

  3. When the milk is nearly boiling, stir in the corn-flour mixture and continue stirring until it boils.

  4. Let it boil for five minutes, then add the vanilla extract.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mould that has been dipped in cold water.

  2. Allow it to stand in a cool place until set.

  3. To serve, dip the mould in hot water and carefully turn it out onto a glass dish.

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

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

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens and sets into the blancmange.
Corn-flour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells when heated, giving the blancmange its set structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the mild flavour of the milk.

The step that matters

Stirring the corn-flour into the milk. Corn-flour mixed directly into hot liquid can clump; mixing it first into a smooth paste with cold milk lets the starch disperse evenly. Continued stirring until boiling then lets the starch swell and thicken the mixture uniformly.

“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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