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Riband Blancmange
Make as much blancmange as is required to fill the moulds. Divide this into as many portions as it is intended to have different colours. Many persons will prefer two colours, red and white only, others will wish to have also green, chocolate, and yellow. Put a little of the blancmange an inch deep into an oiled mould. Let it get perfectly cold and firm, then pour in a little of a different colour to the same depth. When this is firm, add a third, and continue until the mould is full. Put the mould in a cold place until wanted, and turn it out carefully. The rose-colour may be produced by adding two or three drops of cochineal to the blancmange, chocolate-colour with boiled chocolate, green with spinach-juice, yellow with saffron or yolk of egg. The riband will be spoilt unless each colour is allowed to get quite firm before another is poured upon it.
A method rather than a formula: the book assumes you already have a blancmange recipe and only tells you how to stripe it. Everything depends on temperature control between layers.
- The hinge: warm, not hotEach new colour must be liquid enough to pour but barely warm — around body temperature. Anything hotter melts the set layer beneath and the colours bleed into a muddy band.
- Setting timesAn inch is a deep layer. In the refrigerator allow 30-45 minutes per layer for a gelatine blancmange, longer for a tall mould; a five-colour version is a three- to four-hour project. Cornflour blancmange sets faster but is more prone to skinning over, which shows as a seam.
- What blancmange means hereBlancmange in this period means milk or cream sweetened and thickened with isinglass, gelatine, or cornflour, rather than the almond jelly of earlier centuries; this entry does not say which. Modern powdered gelatine works: roughly 1 tablespoon (about 10 g) per pint of liquid gives a firm, unmouldable set.
- Keeping the reserved colours liquidStand the bowls of tinted blancmange in a pan of warm water off the heat, stirring occasionally, so they neither set nor skin while the mould is chilling. Reheating a set portion is possible but repeated boiling weakens gelatine.
- CochinealCochineal is carmine, made from scale insects — still sold as a food colouring and listed as E120 or carmine on labels, though not vegetarian. It is intensely strong, and the two or three drops specified will give the pale rose the text asks for rather than a scarlet.
- Spinach juice and saffronGreen was made by pounding raw spinach, straining the juice, and heating it gently until the colour coagulated — a fiddly step. A few drops of green colouring or matcha does the same job. Saffron needs steeping in a spoonful of hot milk first; yolk of egg must be cooked into the base, not stirred in cold.
- Oiling the mouldA neutral oil, applied thinly with a brush or a scrap of cloth. Too much pools at the bottom and leaves a greasy film on the finished stripe. A metal mould gives the cleanest release.
- Turning outDip the mould in hot water for three or four seconds, no more, then invert onto a wetted plate — the water lets you slide the shape into the centre if it lands off-square.
- YieldA pint and a half of blancmange (about 850 ml) fills a medium mould and serves six. Divide it by the number of colours before you tint anything.
Riband — ribbon — blancmange belongs to the Victorian appetite for food that performed at the table. Over the middle decades of the century commercial gelatine and isinglass made moulded jellies and creams more widely achievable in households with a cook and a cold larder, and trade catalogues offered moulds in a great range of shapes. The striped effect was one of the simplest showpieces available: no sculpting, no sugar work, just patience and a cool place. The colouring list is a fair index of what a well-stocked store cupboard might hold — cochineal, saffron and chocolate all bought in, spinach juice made at home. Note too what the entry takes for granted: a room cold enough to set cream reliably, hours of waiting, and someone in the kitchen to pour the next layer at the right moment.