Sprinkle the blancmange with toasted flaked almonds, shredded coconut, fresh or toasted coconut shaving, white chocolate shavings, or cranberries and raisins mixture. 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.

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. 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. This seemingly fancy dessert is simply delicious and simply easy to make! Here is how you make blancmange: 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 alchemyWhisk 1 cup (8oz/225ml) milk with the cornstarch in a small bowl to form a slurry. Then, whisk in the sugar and vanilla paste or extract. Set aside. 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

If set in moulds: Dip the mould in hot water for 10-20 seconds to loosen the blancmange from the edges. Trace a knife around the inner edge of the mould if needed, then tip upside down onto a plate. Drizzle with coulis. Don’t skip making the slurry—otherwise, you make end up with an uneven mix of cornstarch, and you’ll end up with lumpy blancmange. In fact, when you translate it to English, it sounds a lot less fancy. Blancmange means “white eating,” which is fitting since it is white. However, you can dress it up with some delicious fresh, seasonal fruits!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. 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. 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. 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 And Nina’s pink blancmange? Fruit was added to the isinglass blancmanges in the C19th, and the Rouse’s copy of Warne’s Model Cookery features strawberry blancmange, but as Eliza Acton points out – a strawberry or pink blancmange is, of course, an argument in terms, as it is not white. She suggests it should instead be called a ‘moulded strawberry cream’ or a bavarois‘Bavarian cream’ such as we might make these days, fruit puree and cream set with gelatine. Putting it to the test

In a saucepan, heat the remaining 3½ cups (28oz/790ml) of milk over medium-low heat until it starts to steam.Soak half a box of gelatin in a cupful of water for an hour. Boil two cups of milk, then add the gelatin, half a cup of grated chocolate rubbed smooth in a little milk, and one cup of sugar. Boil all together eight or ten minutes. Remove from the fire and when nearly cold, beat into this the whipped whites of three eggs flavored with vanilla. This should be served cold with custard made of the yolks, or sugar and cream. Set the molds in a cold place. Serve with the fruit in the teacups or carefully unmold the blancmange onto plates by dipping the cup in hot water and then running a thin knife, carefully, around the rim. 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. Stew nice, fresh fruit (cherries, raspberries, and strawberries being the best). Strain off the juice and sweeten to taste. Place it over the fire in a double kettle until it boils. While boiling, stir in cornstarch wet with a little cold water, allowing two tablespoons of cornstarch to each pint of juice. Continue stirring until sufficiently cooked, then pour into molds wet in cold water and set away to cool. Serve with cream and sugar. The oldest recipe that can be found is written in Danish, which may have been translated from a German cookbook.