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Chocolate Blanc-Mange
Half box gelatine, soaked till dissolved in as much cold water as will cover it, four ounces sweet chocolate grated, one quart sweet milk, one cup sugar; boil milk, sugar and chocolate five minutes, add gelatine, and boil five minutes more, stirring constantly; flavor with vanilla, put in molds to cool and eat with cream. If wanted for tea, make in the morning; if for dinner, the night before. For a plain blanc-mange omit the chocolate. -Mrs. Dr. Houston, Urbana.
A straightforward molded gelatine dessert, with two things in it that a modern cook has to translate: the gelatine measure and the long boil.
- The hinge: don't boil the gelatineProlonged boiling degrades gelatine and weakens the set; five minutes at a rolling boil is more than it needs. Stir the softened gelatine into the hot chocolate milk off the heat, or over the barest heat, until it is fully dissolved, which takes under a minute.
- Half a box of gelatineBoxes were not standardized in the 1870s, so this is genuinely ambiguous. As a guide, a quart of liquid needs roughly two modern quarter-ounce envelopes (about 1 1/2 tablespoons granulated gelatine) for a mold that will stand unsupported, less if you want it spoonable.
- Soaking"Soaked till dissolved in as much cold water as will cover it" means bloomed, not liquefied. Sprinkle over about 1/4 cup cold water and leave 5-10 minutes until it swells and goes translucent.
- Sweet chocolateThis is sweetened dark eating chocolate, not the unsweetened baking chocolate that also sat in Victorian pantries. Four ounces of a 45-55 percent bar is the closest match; if you use unsweetened, expect the cup of sugar to be barely enough.
- ScorchingMilk with sugar and chocolate in it catches on the bottom of the pan quickly. Use a heavy saucepan, keep it below a hard boil, and stir the whole base of the pan rather than just the middle.
- MoldsRinse the mold with cold water before filling, or film it lightly with a neutral oil. To turn out, dip the mold to its rim in warm water for a few seconds and invert onto a chilled plate.
- Chilling timeThe instruction to make it in the morning for tea, or the night before for dinner, is a pre-refrigeration way of saying it needs several hours. In a modern refrigerator four hours will set it; overnight gives a cleaner unmolding.
- Yield and servingA quart of milk makes about six servings. "Eat with cream" means plain unwhipped pouring cream at the table, which is still the best treatment.
Blanc-mange began as the medieval European blanc manger, literally "white food" - a pounded almond and capon or fish dish that was as often savory as sweet, and whose defining quality was its whiteness. By the nineteenth century it had narrowed to a sweet molded milk pudding, thickened with isinglass, calf's-foot jelly, arrowroot, cornstarch or, increasingly, commercial packaged gelatine, which is what makes this version possible in a home kitchen without a stockpot of trotters. Adding chocolate abandons the whole premise of the name. The attribution to Mrs. Dr. Houston of Urbana is typical of the book, which is generally said to have been compiled from contributions by Ohio housewives and sold to raise money for a Methodist parsonage fund.