Blancmange may be colored green by mixing a little juice of spinach with the cream. Cochineal* which has been infused in a little brandy for half an hour will color it red and saffron will give it a bright yellow tinge. Serve this with macerated berries: mix 4 cups (20oz/568g) fresh or frozen berries (sliced if large) with ½ cup (4oz/115g) granulated sugar. Let sit on the counter for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the berries have released some liquid and a sweet sauce is formed. After all this discussion I decided it was time to road test a couple of blancmange recipes to see why they have dropped off the modern menu – is it simply because they’re regarded as the ‘poor cousin’ to the richer, more stylish panna cotta or bavarois? Or because they became so generic, losing so much of their original mystique, as jelly has, with all the instant shortcuts that have come with technology and industrialised food? Or is it that we can so easily buy ice cream and chilled desserts there’s just no need for home made milk puddings? Nina and her husband ran a dairy at Rouse Hill so enjoyed their own fresh milk, which was probably much richer than the highly processed milk we buy today – its likely that her blancmange was richer and creamier than one we would make today.

Storage– Blancmange will last for around 2-3 days in the fridge. You can store separately from the coulis to stop it staining the white blancmange if you like. Keep the blancmange covered to preserve the flavour and stop the top from drying out. Transfer the blancmange to apastry bagwith the cut tip and push it into glasses/small glass jars. Refrigerate for about 2 hours. In a saucepan, heat the remaining 3½ cups (28oz/790ml) of milk over medium-low heat until it starts to steam.Blancmange is a subtle dessert that is custard-like in texture, lightly flavored with vanilla, and either eaten alone or topped with berries. And can you believe you can make it with just some milk, cornstarch, sugar, and vanilla? To make blanc-manger,soak gelatin in cold water for 10 minutes. Split thevanilla beanin half, lengthwise. Our ‘Marching on’ post included an introductory video for Rouse Hill House and Farm and its rich food heritage. In it we talk about blancmange, a chilled milk-based dessert dish that Nina Rouse used to make for her children and later, her grandchildren. Nina’s granddaughter Miriam Hamilton has fond childhood memories of pink blancmange being made in a fluted enamel mould, which still remains in the Rouse Hill house collection today. In hot weather, if there was no ice available, Nina would suspend the blancmange in the house’s cistern to allow the pudding to set. Kitchen alchemy The blancmange is perfect for serving at birthday or wedding parties, family gatherings, or entertaining parties.

Stir the almonds by degrees into a quart of cream, alternately with half a pound of powdered white sugar, and adding a teaspoon of beaten mace. Put in the melted isinglass and stir the whole very hard. Then put it into a porcelain skillet and let it boil fast for a quarter of an hour. Strain it into a pitcher and pour it into your molds, which must first be wetted with cold water. Let it stand in a cool place undisturbed till it has entirely congealed. Then wrap a cloth dipped in hot water round the molds, loosen the blancmange round the edges with a knife, and turn it out into glass dishes. Instead of using a figure-mold, you may set it to congeal in tea-cups or wine glasses. Use a Whisk– Use a whisk instead of a spoon to stir the blancmange as this will reduce the risk of lumps. This also works for other milk-based puddings, custards or white sauces like bechamel. Sprinkle the blancmange with toasted flaked almonds, shredded coconut, fresh or toasted coconut shaving, white chocolate shavings, or cranberries and raisins mixture. It is best to make it the day before it is wanted. Put into a bowl an ounce of isinglass (in warm weather you must take an ounce and a quarter). Pour on as much rose water as will cover the isinglass and set it on hot ashes to dissolve. Blanch one-fourth pound of shelled almonds, (half sweet and half bitter*) and beat them to a paste in a mortar, one at a time, moistening them all the while with a little rose water.It is served cold in glasses, ramekins, small glass jars, or as a dessert set in a mold. Authentically white, it can also be made in different colors. Blancmange variations We still buy cornflour based custard powders (basically sweetened, coloured cornflour) but blancmange powders which were sold in my grandmother’s day have long disappeared. While the cornflour blancmange recipe has survived in The Commonsense Cookery book, blancmanges seem to have slipped from our modern dessert repertoire. The gelatine based blancmange is still with us to some degree, in the richer and more appealingly named Italian panna cotta which uses cream rather than milk, vanilla or other flavouring, and set with gelatine. To make red fruit coulis,mix the fruits and sugar in afood processor, except a few for the decoration (photo 1). Take a teacup of arrow root, put it into a large bowl, and dissolve it in a little cold water. When it is melted, pour off the water, and let the arrow root remain undisturbed. Boil half a pint of unskimmed milk, made very sweet with white sugar, add a beaten nutmeg, and eight or nine blades of mace, mixed with the juice and grated peel of a lemon. When it has boiled long enough to be highly flavored, strain it into a pint and a half of very rich milk or cream, and add a quarter of a pound of sugar. Boil the whole for ten minutes, then strain it, boiling hot, over the arrow root. Stir it well and frequently till cold, then put it into molds and let it set to congeal. Before commercial gelatin was produced, Irish Moss and isinglass were used. Irish moss is a reddish purple moss found in the Atlantic Ocean coastline, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. And Isinglass is a form of collagen made from the dried fish bladders of fish.

In one teacup of water, boil until dissolved one ounce of isinglass or of patent gelatin (which is better). Stir it continually while boiling. Then squeeze the juice of a lemon upon a cup of fine, white sugar. Stir the sugar into a quart of rich cream and half a pint of Madeira or sherry wine. When it is well mixed, add the dissolved isinglass or gelatin, stir all well together and pour it into molds previously wet with cold water. Set the molds upon ice, let them stand until their contents are hard and cold, then serve with sugar and cream or custard sauce. To serve,pour 1 to 2 tablespoons red fruit coulis on top of the blancmange. Decorate with fresh fruit and serve (photo 6). PHOTO 5 PHOTO 6 Expert tips Bring the final touch to the dessert with lime zest and a mint leaf. Why you should try this recipe Heavy cream: the recipe calls for heavy cream with at least 36% fat content. Replace it with whipped cream (30% fat content) or whole milk. Then pour the blancmange into the whipped cream. Gently mix by lifting the mixture with the whisk (photo 5).

Instructions

bitter almonds– a variety of almond with a bitter taste sometimes used as flavoring or in oils. The almond variety sold by the food industry today is the sweet almond. Historic cook books provide a reasonable chronology albeit a random selection of texts: Raffald (1769) bases hers on calf’s feet jelly (home made gelatine) but still calls for bitter almonds; Acton (1845), Beeton (1861 & c1902) and Cassell’s (c1890) all ask for isinglass. Isinglass produced a fine, crystal clear gel (it is still used to clarify some wines), but by the end of the C19th century it had given way to the relatively new and convenient ‘instant’ or dried gelatine that emerged with new processing technologies, and many recipes that used isinglass were re-written in gelatine’s favour. Beeton also includes an ‘Arrowroot blancmange’ , a precursor to cornflour blancmange. The Kookaburra cookbook (1912), The Goulburn and The Golden Wattle cookery books (post 1930) all use gelatine. Interestingly the Kookaburra Cookery book recipe is enriched with eggs, rendering it, in the purists’ eyes, a custard pudding rather than a blancmange; the Golden Wattle also includes a ‘Cornflour mould’ which is almost identical to The Commonsense Cookery Book (1914 – 2014 editions) balncmange. The wash-up from all this they are essentially, variations on a sweetened milk pudding with a flavouring of some kind – rose or blossom water, laurel or bay leaves, lemon peel, ‘essence’– almond or vanilla perhaps. Several recipes instruct that you stand the blancmange mould in a shallow basin of iced or cold water until it sets – the coldest water Nina did knew of on a hot summer’s day was a few metres below ground in the well. A clever marketing exercise Sugar– Regular white sugar is fine, sub with brown sugar, coconut sugar or honey if you prefer. We used white sugar in the blanc manger and raw sugar in the coulis for a richer berry flavour. This seemingly fancy dessert is simply delicious and simply easy to make! Here is how you make blancmange: Gently heat the remaining milk in a large saucepan on low heat. Just before it boils, add in the vanilla extract, sugar and the cornstarch slurry.

Transfer the blancmange to a pastry bag with the cut tip and push it into glasses/small glass jars. Refrigerate for about 2 hours.

Ancient origins

Make sure to mix a little whipped cream with the main preparation before putting it in the whipped cream to incorporate well. Cornflour is not commonly seen in C18th and C19th British cookbooks – you’d find ‘Indian’ corn (referring to its American origins) for polenta-like cornmeal puddings, but until the mid C19th what we know as cornflour was mainly used as a laundry product, used to stiffen aprons, shirt colours and cuffs. Rather than being a milled flour per se, cornflour is actually corn starch, extracted from the germ and endosperm of the maize kernel, dried and processed into a fine powder. Household management books such as Mrs Beeton’s include receipts for the laundress, for the formula to convert the cornstarch into an early version of ironing spray. And today, cornstarch is used as an alternative to talcum powder. If the blancmange is "lumpy" after adding it to the whipped cream, continue to mix gently until it becomes homogeneous.