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Ninth Day: Blanc-Mange
No. 109-BLANC-MANGE.
One quart milk, one oz. Cooper's gelatine or isinglass, two teaspoonfuls vanilla, three-quarters of a cup sugar. Keep out one cupful of the milk, and soak the gelatine in it for not less than an hour; scald the rest of the milk, and pour into it, afterward heating (not boiling), all together until the gelatine is perfectly dissolved. Stir frequently, then add the sugar and pour into moulds wet with cold water. To be eaten with cream, boiled custard, or any kind of preserves or canned fruit. "It doesn't tell what kind of sugar you must take," remarked Mabel. "I use granulated sugar for almost all kinds of cooking," replied Aunt Jane. "It is so easy to manage. For hard pudding-sauce, or for sifting over the top of pies or cake, you should have powdered; and for gingerbread or any kind of cake or pudding made with molasses, coffee sugar is nicest, unless brown is expressly mentioned. Here are some more receipts for you." No. 110-FARINA BLANC-MANGE.
One quart new milk, two ounces farina, half a saltspoon salt. Put the milk over boiling water, keeping out a little to mix with the farina. When the hot milk has a film over it, add the farina and salt, and stir until it forms quite a thick batter; then pour into moulds wet with cold water.
Two moulded milk puddings from the same lesson: one set with gelatine, one thickened with farina. Both are straightforward, but the measurements and the sugar talk need translating.
- Never let it boilThe instruction to heat "not boiling" is the hinge. Gelatine loses setting strength if held at a rolling boil, and scalded milk sugars will catch on the pan bottom. Bring it to steaming, around 175F, and hold it only until no grains remain on the back of a spoon.
- One ounce of gelatineAn ounce of nineteenth-century sheet or granulated gelatine is roughly four envelopes of modern powdered gelatine (each about 1/4 oz, or 2 1/2 teaspoons). Modern gelatine is standardised for setting strength in a way period products were not, and three envelopes to a quart of milk gives a pudding that unmoulds cleanly without being rubbery.
- IsinglassThe alternative given is fish gelatine, made from the swim bladders of sturgeon and other fish. It is still sold, mainly to brewers and to conservators, but it is expensive and no longer worth seeking out for a dessert.
- Add the vanilla lastThe recipe lists vanilla in the ingredients and then never mentions it again. Stir it in off the heat with the sugar; extract driven off in a hot pan takes most of the flavour with it.
- SugarAunt Jane's granulated is much the same as ours. Powdered then meant granulated sugar ground fine, rather than modern cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar, though confectioners' is the nearest substitute; coffee sugar was a coarse, slightly golden, less refined sugar, for which demerara or turbinado is the closest modern stand-in.
- Setting timeNo chilling instruction is given; presumably the moulds went into a cold larder or onto ice. Allow four hours in the refrigerator, or overnight for a large single mould.
- UnmouldingWetting the moulds with cold water is the whole trick, and it works. To turn out, dip the mould to its rim in warm water for five seconds and invert onto a wetted plate, which lets you slide the pudding into position.
- FarinaIn this period farina meant a fine wheat meal, essentially what is sold as Cream of Wheat or fine semolina. Two ounces is about 1/3 cup by weight; a saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon. This version sets by starch alone, so it must be cooked to a genuinely thick batter or it will slump.
- YieldA quart of milk gives six to eight servings in small moulds. Both puddings are plain, and the gelatine version carries the serving suggestions of cream, custard and preserves.
Blanc-mange began as a medieval dish of pounded chicken or fish with almonds, rice and sugar, its name meaning simply "white food"; by the eighteenth century the meat had dropped away and it survived as a sweet white pudding thickened with almonds, arrowroot, isinglass or, later, commercial gelatine. Peter Cooper, the New York industrialist, patented a concentrated gelatine preparation in 1845, and the packaged product named for him is the reason a home cook around the 1870s could buy an ounce over the counter instead of boiling calves' feet for hours. That convenience is exactly why blanc-mange turns up in a children's cookbook: it is sweet, it needs no oven, it unmoulds into a shape worth showing off, and the only real skill involved is keeping the pan below a boil. The farina version is the thriftier cousin, set with cereal starch rather than a bought ingredient, and belongs to the same family as the rice and cornstarch moulds that filled out plain family suppers.