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Blancmange, with Chocolate
Dissolve an ounce of leaf gelatine in half a pint of new milk. Add to it two and a half ounces of vanilla chocolate grated, which has been mixed to a smooth paste with a little cold milk and four ounces of sifted sugar. Mix thoroughly, and place in a clean enamelled iron saucepan; stir till it reaches boiling point. Add a pint of milk; continue to stir over a slow fire for twelve minutes. Then pour into a mould which has been rinsed out with cold water, and leave in a cool place till set. Turn out carefully and serve. Probable cost, 10d.
A late-Victorian moulded cream that depends entirely on gelatine strength — the one figure in the recipe that no longer means what it did.
- The gelatine is the hingeAn ounce (28 g) of modern leaf gelatine to a pint and a half of milk gives a bouncing, rubbery block. Victorian gelatine was not graded and standardised the way modern sheets are, and its setting strength varied from batch to batch; a third to a half that quantity sets a spoonable blancmange firm enough to turn out.
- Boiling pointGelatine loses setting power if held at a hard boil. Bring it just to the point where the surface trembles, then keep the twelve minutes at a bare shiver — "a slow fire" is doing real work in this sentence.
- Vanilla chocolateThis means sweetened eating chocolate flavoured with vanilla, closer to a dark bar of perhaps 50-55% cocoa solids than to modern couverture. Unsweetened baking chocolate will make the result grim; if you use a high-percentage chocolate, expect to want the full four ounces of sugar.
- New milkFresh whole milk, unskimmed and unsoured. Whole milk is the right substitute; skimmed milk sets harder and tastes thin.
- Enamelled ironProbably specified to keep milk and cocoa off bare metal, which can taint or discolour them. Any non-reactive pan — stainless steel, enamel, a lined saucepan — does the job.
- Rinsing the mouldA film of cold water between metal and custard is what lets the blancmange drop cleanly. Do not dry the mould, and do not oil it.
- Setting and turning out"A cool place" was a larder; four to six hours in the refrigerator, or overnight, is safer. Dip the mould to the rim in hot water for a count of five, then invert onto a wetted plate so you can slide the shape straight if it lands off-centre.
- YieldAbout a pint and a half of mixture, which fills a 900 ml mould and serves six.
Blancmange is one of the oldest names in European cookery, and it began as something quite different: a medieval blanc manger of pounded almonds, rice or breadcrumbs and shredded capon, white in colour and belonging as much to the savoury side of the table as to the sweet. By the time Cassell's dictionary was compiled in the 1870s the chicken had long gone, the dish had become a sweet, and the setting agent had shifted from ground rice and isinglass to commercial gelatine sold in leaves and packets — a change often said to have put moulded creams within reach of ordinary households rather than confectioners. A chocolate version is a late arrival and a sign of its moment: eating chocolate, already sweetened and vanilla-scented, had become cheap enough to grate into a family pudding. That the recipe still calls the result a blancmange, when nothing about it is white, shows how completely the word had come to mean the mould and the wobble rather than the colour. The costing of tenpence, printed as a matter of course throughout the book, is a reminder that these dictionaries were written for cooks working to a household budget.