Home › Dessert › Delicious Blanc Mange
Delicious Blanc Mange
Put one ounce of Cooper's isinglass in a little water over the fire until dissolved; one quart cream, after having whipped the cream flavor with vanilla, sweeten to taste. Wet moulds with cold water, fill and set them near the ice until they conjeal. The isinglass should first be dissolved in a little cold water, just enough to cover it.
A cream jelly rather than the boiled cornstarch pudding most people now mean by blancmange. The whole thing turns on getting dissolved gelatine into whipped cream without deflating it or setting it in strings.
- Isinglass, and how muchIsinglass is gelatine, historically made from the swim bladders of sturgeon and other fish; Cooper's was a widely sold American brand. Modern powdered gelatine is more consistent and cleaner-tasting: about half an ounce, roughly two 1/4-oz envelopes, should set a quart of whipped cream firmly enough to unmould.
- Bloom cold, then meltThe last sentence is the real first step, and the recipe is right to repeat it. Cover the gelatine with just enough cold water to swell it for five minutes, then warm it gently until clear. Never let it boil, which weakens the set and gives it a glue-like smell.
- The hinge: temperature matchingHot gelatine poured into cold whipped cream sets on contact and leaves rubbery threads through the mould. Let the dissolved gelatine cool until it is barely warm, whisk a cupful of the cream into it first, then fold that back into the rest.
- Whip to soft peaks onlyThe cream is whipped before the gelatine goes in, so stop while it still slumps. Fully stiff cream will not accept the folding without breaking, and the finished blancmange goes grainy.
- Sweetening and flavourThe recipe adds the vanilla and sugar after whipping; either order works, though sugar folded in during whipping dissolves more evenly. For a quart of cream, 4 to 6 tablespoons of sugar and one to two teaspoons of vanilla extract suits modern palates; caster or icing sugar dissolves without grit.
- "Set them near the ice"An icebox instruction. Refrigerate at ordinary fridge temperature for at least 4 hours, longer for a large mould. Do not freeze it: ice crystals ruin the texture and the set collapses on thawing.
- Wetting the mouldsRinsing with cold water and not drying them is correct and still works. To turn out, dip the mould briefly in warm water to the rim, then invert onto a chilled plate.
- YieldA quart of cream, whipped, gives roughly two quarts of volume. Expect eight to ten servings from one large mould, or a dozen small ones.
Blancmange began in medieval Europe as blanc manger, a white dish of pounded almonds, rice and shredded capon that sat comfortably on either side of the sweet-savoury line. By the nineteenth century the meat had gone and the name attached to any pale moulded cream, set with isinglass, calf's-foot jelly, arrowroot or cornstarch depending on the cook's purse. Isinglass was the luxury option: pure, nearly flavourless and expensive, made from fish bladders and long used to clarify wine and beer as well as to set jellies. Cooper's was a familiar American branded isinglass and gelatine, and the name is traditionally associated with Peter Cooper, the New York industrialist generally credited with an early United States patent for a packaged gelatine. That a household book could name a brand rather than describe how to render your own from calves' feet is the real marker of date here — setting a dessert had become a matter of shopping rather than a day's boiling.