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Dessert

Blanc Mange with Fruit Sauce

A custard dessert made from sweet milk, corn starch, sugar, vanilla, egg whites, and salt, served with fruit sauce.

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

Blanc Mange with Fruit Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the blancmange

  1. In a double boiler, combine the sweet milk, corn starch, and sugar.

  2. Stir and cook until the mixture thickens.

  3. Remove from heat and add the vanilla, salt, and stiffly beaten egg whites using the folding method.

  4. Pour the mixture into molds rinsed with water.

Serve

  1. Serve with crushed fruit or custard sauce.

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. Vanilla + sugartop 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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar 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

Corn starch
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the blancmange its set, sliceable body.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they add air and a light, delicate texture.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into a creamy set.
Sugar
Sweetens the blancmange and adds body to the cooked base.

The step that matters

Stirring while the mixture thickens. Cornstarch must be stirred as it heats so it gelatinizes evenly; if left still it can scorch or form lumps, and the mixture needs to thicken fully to set firmly in the molds.

“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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