The first comedic episode I ever saw from Monty Python’s Flying Circus involved giant blancmange puddings playing tennis at Wimbledon. The episode was zany enough to make me a Python fan, but it also stirred my culinary curiosity. Just what was a blancmange?
First included in an early 13th century Danish cookbook, blancmange–from the Old-French blanc-mangier, or “white dish”, is simply white pudding made from fresh-pressed almond milk. Believed to have spread across Europe through Arab trade routes, it used to be a savory dish, but by the 17th century, the pudding moved squarely into the dessert category with the addition of sugar, gelatin, and sometimes cream.
While French chefs preserved the pudding’s delicate texture and almond-rich essence by using a combination of sweet and bitter almonds, in England the pudding devolved. Corn flour replaced gelatin as the thickening agent, artificial flavoring substituted for extract of bitter almond, and food companies started selling blancmange in instant-mix packets that were notoriously bad, making it a food Britons loved to hate.
Hoping to emulate the elegant loveliness that once popularized blancmange, I turned to the first American edition of Larousse Gastronomique, which was a chef named Prosper Montagné’s encyclopedia of French cookery. There I found famed 19th century chef Antonin Carême’s recipe for blancmanger, slightly adapted here to allow usage of a food processor, almond extract, and gelatin powder. I used gelatin powder rather than the fish bladder gelatin called isinglass, used in Carême’s time (!) And almond extract instead of the bitter almonds Carême specified because while bitter almonds are rendered non-toxic when cooked, it’s illegal to sell them for home-cook usage here.
You can make this classic blancmange two ways: with or without cream. Both are very good. To make the pudding, you’ll boil a pound of raw almonds with skins on. Shocked in cold water, the almond skins will easily slip off as you pinch them, leaving you with a pretty pile of blanched almonds. Discard the skins and grind the blanched almonds in a food processor, slowly adding water to make a slurry. Pour the slurry into a clean, fine-weave cloth and twist to extract the creamy, fresh almond milk. Boiling the milk with sugar, softened gelatin and cream (if using) you’ll then cool the mixture slightly, stir in almond extract and a little vanilla paste, pour into molds or small serving cups and chill until firm.
To release puddings from molds, dip the molds for a few scant seconds in hot water and invert each over serving plates. If a pudding needs a little encouragement to release, use your plastic-gloved fingers to gently coax it away from the inside edge of the mold as you invert it.
Because red berries go very well with blancmange, I’ve included a red raspberry sauce. Spoon it over the puddings, or, serve it alongside, with extra fresh berries over all. Continue Reading…
