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Strawberry Blanc-Mange
Pick the tops from one quart of ripe strawberries, place the fruit in a basin and crush it with a wooden spoon, sprinkling one-quarter of a pound of powdered sugar over it at the same time. Allow the strawberries to stand for a few hours. Put one-fourth pound of sugar and two ounces of isinglass in a lined saucepan with one pint of milk, and stir it over the fire until the isinglass is dissolved. Strain the milk through muslin, mix with it one and one-fourth pint of cream, and stir the whole until cold. Pour the cream and milk over the strawberries, beating them at the same time; then squeeze in the juice of a lemon gradually in order to prevent curdling. Turn the above mixture into an ornamental mould, pack it in ice, and leave it until set. Turn the blanc-mange out of the mould onto a fancy dish, and serve. Blanc-Mange, Waldorf Style Carefully blanch about six ounces of sweet and two ounces of bitter almonds; place in a vessel and cover them with cold water, letting them soak for fully an hour; drain through a sieve and pound thoroughly in a mortar, adding gradually a very little cold water, and continue pounding for ten minutes. Then remove to a vessel, adding two gills of lukewarm water, and mix for two minutes with the spatula. Spread over another vessel a large napkin, pour above preparation in and lift the four corners, and squeeze the liquor through the napkin, and place the almond milk one side for future use Place in a saucepan a little cold water, three-quarters of an ounce of gelatine, a piece of vanilla bean two inches long and split in halves, add about four ounces of powdered sugar. Mix this well with the spatula for a couple of minutes, then put on the lid, and let the contents infuse for thirty minutes; place the pan upon a hot stove, stirring gently from the bottom, and let it boil gently for four or five minutes; take it from the fire and set one side for three minutes, then pour in the almond milk, and mix again for two minutes or so, using the spatula, and strain the whole mixture through a fine sieve into another vessel. Have a three-pint fluted blanc-mange mould in readiness, and put some broken ice at the bottom of a pail, place the mould upon the ice, arranging the ice around the sides of the mould until it is sunk into the ice up to the edge; stir the preparation for one minute, and then pour into the mould, cover the pail with a napkin, and leave it to become frozen. Then carefully remove the pail, wipe off the ice with a towel, and have ready a cold dessert-dish, with a folded napkin ovet it, and turn the blanc-mange onto this, decorate with candied cherries and angelica, and serve.
Two recipes share this page. The strawberry blanc-mange is a straightforward gelatine cream in period dress; the almond "Waldorf Style" that follows it calls for two ounces of bitter almonds and cannot be made.
- Bitter almondsBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nuts are crushed and wetted — exactly the pounding and soaking this recipe describes. Two ounces is a substantial dose in a three-pint mould meant to be eaten cold and uncooked, and no step here drives off the cyanide. Their sale for eating is restricted in the United States and much of Europe for this reason; use a current recipe if you want an almond blanc-mange.
- IsinglassA fish-swim-bladder gelatine, once the standard setting agent for clear jellies and creams. Two ounces by weight is a very large quantity by modern reckoning and would give a firm, sliceable set rather than a spoonable cream — old isinglass varied greatly in strength, so the amount is not directly translatable to sheet or powdered gelatine.
- GillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. Two gills is one cup.
- Powdered sugarIn this period the term usually means finely ground granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. A quarter pound is about half a cup.
- Packing in ice"Pack it in ice and leave it until set" is the period method of setting a mould. Note that the mould is chilled, not churned — despite the word "frozen" in the second recipe, neither is an ice cream.
- The lemon juiceAdded slowly at the end for a reason worth respecting: acid dropped into cold dairy all at once will curdle it. Squeeze it in gradually while beating, as written.
Blanc-mange began as a medieval European dish of pounded almonds, rice and often shredded capon — white food, literally, and as much a savoury as a sweet. By the nineteenth century the meat had gone and the almond milk remained, set with isinglass or calf's-foot jelly and turned out of an elaborate copper mould. Bitter almonds were the standard flavouring, used in small proportion to sweet almonds to supply the marzipan note now got from extract; cookbooks of the period treat them as an ordinary pantry item. Oscar Tschirky's book, published in 1896, catches the form at its most decorative: a fluted three-pint mould, a folded napkin on the dessert dish, candied cherries and angelica. The strawberry version, with fruit crushed and macerated in sugar rather than almonds pounded in a mortar, shows the dish drifting toward the fruit-and-cream desserts that would replace it entirely.