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Blanc Manger
Plunge a half pound sweet almonds and six single bitter almonds in a pint boiling water for three minutes, drain and shell, then place in a mortar and pound to a smooth paste. Transfer and dilute the paste in a pint cold milk, in a small saucepan, and boil for two minutes. Strain the almond milk through a cheesecloth into a bowl.
Place in a saucepan one ounce gelatin with a half pint water and five ounces sugar; mix on the fire with a wooden spoon until thoroughly dissolved. Add the milk, with two tablespoons orange essence; mix well while boiling for two minutes. Strain this into a bowl and let cool. Then transfer it into a dome-shaped quart mould, cover it, then set in cracked ice and let stand for one hour. Remove, unmould on a dish with a folded napkin and serve.
This is a classic almond-milk blancmange, and everything about it is straightforward except the six bitter almonds, which put it out of reach of a modern kitchen. The notes below explain the problem and decode the older language in the text.
- The bitter almonds are the reason to stopBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nuts are crushed and moistened — exactly what pounding them in a mortar and diluting them in milk accomplishes. The recipe does specify six, but the yield varies from nut to nut, so the actual dose is not controllable, and the brief boiling here should not be relied on to drive off the volatile compound.
- They are also not legally soldRaw bitter almonds cannot be sold for eating in the United States and are restricted in many other countries. Anything offered under that name today is generally a flavouring extract, which is a different product entirely and cannot be substituted into a recipe that treats the almonds as bulk solids to be pounded into paste.
- The chilling method is not a fridge"Set in cracked ice" means the covered mould is buried in ice, not merely refrigerated, and one hour reflects the aggressive cooling that gives. It is a period detail rather than a modern instruction, and no reworking of it makes the almonds safe.
- An ounce of gelatin is not a modern packetAn ounce of the gelatin available when this was written is not reliably equivalent to an ounce of today's bloom-rated powder; strength varied between products, and bloom grading is a later standardisation. Treat the quantity as a period figure rather than one to carry straight across.
- "Orange essence"This means a prepared orange flavouring, such as an essence or orange-flower water, not orange juice or zest. Two tablespoons of a modern concentrated extract would be overwhelming.
- If you want to make blancmangeUse a current recipe built on sweet almonds alone. The dish itself is perfectly sound; only this version's flavouring is the problem.
Blanc manger — literally "white food" — is one of the oldest continuously named dishes in European cookery, appearing in medieval manuscripts as a pounded mixture of almonds, rice and shredded white poultry, sweet and savoury at once. Over the following centuries the meat dropped away and the almond milk stayed, and by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries blancmange had become firmly a dessert, set first with isinglass or calf's-foot jelly and later with commercial gelatin, which is what this version uses. The dome-shaped quart mould turned out onto a folded napkin is the standard restaurant presentation of the period; the napkin's purpose is often said to have been a practical one. The handful of bitter almonds among the sweet ones was a common way of getting a pronounced almond flavour — the same reasoning that put them in ratafias, macaroons and marzipan — though they have since largely disappeared from cookbooks.