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Dessert

Irish Moss Blanc Mange

A sweet dessert made from Irish moss, milk, sugar, vanilla, egg, and wine or brandy, set in molds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Irish Moss Blanc Mange

Why it works: Irish moss and vanilla share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 58 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Irish Moss Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the moss

  1. Soak the Irish moss in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Mix the soaked moss with boiling milk and sweeten to taste with sugar and vanilla.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve and pour into molds.

Set and serve

  1. Place the molds on ice to thicken until firm enough to cut into slices.

  2. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it begins to boil.

  3. Beat the egg briskly into the hot milk and flavor with wine or brandy.

  4. Pour the cream over the blancmange before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Irish moss + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  4. Vanilla + coffeetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,391 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

Irish moss
Seaweed-based gelling agent that thickens the milk and lets the blancmange set firm.
Milk
Forms the body of the blancmange and carries the sweetness and vanilla flavour.
Egg
Adds richness and helps thicken the custard-like mixture when beaten into hot milk.

The step that matters

Beat the egg briskly into the hot milk. Adding egg to very hot milk without constant beating can scramble it into lumps. Vigorous stirring spreads the egg evenly so the mixture stays smooth and thickens gently.

“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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