Blanc-Mange
Dissolve over a fire an ounce of isinglass in a gill of water. Pour the melted isinglass in a quart of cream (or mixed cream and milk), and half a pound of loaf sugar. Put in a porcelain kettle, and boil fast for half an hour. Strain it, and add a quarter of pound of almonds, blanched, and shaved fine. Season to the taste with vanilla and wine, but do not add the wine while hot. Pour into moulds.--Mrs. C. C.
Blanc-mange.
Poor two tablespoonfuls cold water on one ounce gelatine to soften it. Boil three pints rich cream. Stir the gelatine into it whilst on the fire, and sweeten to the taste. When it cools, season with three tablespoonfuls peach water. Four ounces almonds, blanched and pounded very fine and boiled with the blanc-manage, are a great improvement. When it begins to thicken, pour into moulds. Serve with plain cream.--Mrs. J. H. T.
Blanc-mange.
Sweeten a pint of cream and flavor it with lemon juice. Then whip it over ice, till a stiff froth. Add one-quarter of an ounce gelatine, dissolved in a little boiling water, and whip it well again to keep the gelatine from settling at the bottom. Pour in a mould, and set on ice till stiff enough to turn out Eat with cream, plain or seasoned. A delicious dish.--Mrs. G. D. L. Blanc-mange. (Very fine.) Dissolve one box gelatine in two quarts milk, let stand for two hours. Boil six almonds in the milk. Strain through a sifter while this is being boiled. Pound together in a mortar, two handfuls blanched almonds and half a cupful granulated sugar. Stir into the boiled milk. Add one tablespoonful vanilla, and sweeten to your taste.--Mrs. W. S.
Four contributors' versions of the same white moulded cream, ranging from a stiff isinglass jelly to a frozen-cream fool. The hinge in all of them is the setting agent: gelatine only needs to be dissolved, not cooked, and everything else follows from that.
- Do not boil the cream for half an hourMrs. C. C.'s thirty-minute fast boil suits an era when isinglass varied in strength and long boiling both concentrated the liquid and cooked off any fishy note. With modern gelatine, heat the cream only until it steams and the granules have vanished — long boiling scorches the milk solids and gives the finished mould a caramel tinge and a skin.
- Isinglass and "one box gelatine"Isinglass is dried fish swim bladder, chiefly sturgeon, still sold to brewers and winemakers for clearing, but not interchangeable by weight with sheet or powdered gelatine. A boxed gelatine of the period generally held about one ounce, or roughly four modern quarter-ounce envelopes — enough to set a quart firmly and two quarts (Mrs. W. S.) only softly, spoonable rather than turn-out-able.
- A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. In the first recipe it is the water in which the isinglass is melted, and it goes into the pan along with the quart of cream.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in hard cones and broken or nipped off as needed. Granulated sugar by weight is a direct substitute; half a pound is about a cup and a sixth.
- Porcelain kettleAn enamelled iron or lined pan, presumably preferred because bare copper and iron could discolour and taint milk. Any heavy non-reactive saucepan does the job.
- Peach waterA period flavouring distilled from peach kernels or leaves, which owe their almond scent to cyanogenic compounds — it is not a product you should improvise at home, and it is hard to find now. Bottled peach or almond extract gives the intended flavour; use about a teaspoon in place of the three tablespoonfuls.
- AlmondsBlanched almonds pounded in a mortar and steeped in the hot milk are doing the work of what we would now buy as almond milk or almond extract. Strain after steeping unless you want the texture; "shaved fine" almonds left in suspension will sink as the mould sets.
- Wine off the heatMrs. C. C. is right that wine goes in after cooling. Added hot it flashes off its aroma, and a strongly acidic sherry or Madeira stirred into scalding cream can curdle it. The same applies to the lemon juice in Mrs. G. D. L.'s whipped version — sugar the cream first and add the juice sparingly at the end.
- Moulding and yieldRinse the mould with cold water or wipe it with a neutral oil, chill four to six hours, then dip the base in warm water for a few seconds to release. The first recipe makes rather more than a quart once the sugar, water and almonds are counted in, so allow a mould of a quart and a half; the two-quart version needs twice that.
Blanc-manger began in medieval Europe as a savoury-leaning dish of pounded almonds, capon or fish and rice, and only narrowed to a sweet white cream in the 18th and 19th centuries — the name, French for "white eating," outlasted the dish it described. What survived the transition was the almond, which is why two of these four versions still call for blanched almonds pounded in a mortar even though gelatine and vanilla now carry the recipe. The presence of both isinglass and boxed gelatine among the contributions is a useful marker of date: commercial granulated gelatine is generally said to have reached American kitchens sometime in the latter part of the century and gradually pushed out the older fish-derived setting agent, and here you can see the two in use side by side in the same household collection.