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Dessert

Corn-flour Blanc Mange

A sweet cornmeal pudding made with milk, sugar, and optional egg yolks, flavored with lemon, almond, or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Corn-flour Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Moisten the corn flour with a little cold milk.

  2. Heat the remaining milk until hot.

  3. Stir the hot milk into the corn flour mixture.

  4. Add sugar, flavoring, and egg yolks, and stir well.

  5. Return to the saucepan and boil for 10 minutes, stirring briskly.

  6. Pour into a mold 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.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Corn flour
Starch that thickens the milk into a smooth, set pudding as it heats.
Milk
Liquid base that gives the pudding its body and soft, creamy texture.
Egg yolks
Optional addition that enriches the pudding and adds richness and body.

The step that matters

Boil for 10 minutes while stirring briskly. Corn flour starch only thickens fully once it reaches a boil and gelatinizes. Stirring keeps the mixture smooth and prevents scorching or lumps on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, flour, milk, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, flour, milk, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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