Jo and the Blancmange
Most of us have read Little Women, and even though I am not a particular fan, I do admit it is a real treasure trove of recipes. A friend has asked me to tackle the blancmange from Jo’s ill-planned and disastrous dinner party for Laurie, and I am happy to oblige. And who is not curious about blancmange?
After spending the morning shopping for the dinner party, which left her with an assortment of sour strawberries, a very young lobster, and some very old asparagus, Jo returns home to begin her preparations. She has no experience with assembling a dinner party and things quickly get out of hand.
Language cannot describe the anxieties, experiences, and exertions Jo underwent that morning; and the dinner she served up became a standing joke. Fearing to ask any more advice, she did her best alone, and discovered that something more than energy and goodwill is necessary to make a cook. She boiled the asparagus for an hour, and was grieved to find the heads cooked off and the stalks harder than ever. The bread burned black, for the salad dressing so aggravated her that she let everything go til she had convinced herself that she could not make it fit to eat. The lobster was a scarlet mystery to her, but she hammered and poked it til it was unshelled, and its meager proportions concealed in a grove of lettuce leaves. The potatoes had to be hurried, not to keep the asparagus waiting, and were not done at last. The blancmange was lumpy, and the strawberries not as ripe as they looked, having been skillfully ‘deaconed.’
One of my older cookbooks tells me that traditionally, French blancmange was made with almond milk and gelatin, but American versions use milk and various binding agents such as cornstarch or farina. We have a nut allergy in the house so I’ll make an alternate version to the French.
The Arkansas Gazette had very harsh words to say about American blancmange in their September 4th, 1904 edition:
The ideal French blanc-mange differs much in character from American blanc-mange. A more insipid dish than the latter can hardly be imagined. In it, milk is used in place of whipped cream and cheap extracts are substituted for wines or other expensive ingredients. The only thing to be said in favor of the American variety is that it is economical, at least in the sense that it is inexpensive to make. But if the housekeeper is bent on economy, let her make an old-fashioned rice pudding or Indian pudding, both of which are delicious as well as economical.
To borrow a phrase from Ms. Alcott: Dear me!
I guess we shall do our best to improve upon the American version.
In one of my 1960s era cookbooks, I found a recipe that uses the milk/cornstarch combination. I made it but it came out a little too hard, and not sweet enough, so I have fiddled around with the proportions and come up with something I think is better. This recipe calls for vanilla or orange zest as a flavoring. I used clear imitation almond.
You will need:
2 1/2 cups milk, divided into 2 cups and one half cup
4 tablespoons cornstarch; note that some recipes I found also call for arrowroot, so you can try that too
1/3 cup sugar
scant 1/4 teaspoon salt (original called for 1/8, I thought that was too little)
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
Scald two cups of milk in a double boiler. I put one pot on top of another, the pot on the stove had water boiling. The second pot, with the milk in it, sits on top. Don’t let the bottom of the “milk” pot touch the boiling water in the stovetop pot. Scald the milk until it steams and has little bubbles on the sides. Try to stir it so it won’t form a skin.
This was my double boiler set-up. I used a flat whisk to stir and get in the corners.
After you have scalded the milk, combine the starch, sugar, and salt in a bowl and whisk in the 1/2 cup milk left, into a slurry. Then whisk all of that into the milk on the stove and heat that for about five minutes, until it thickens, but keep stirring so there are no lumps.
Take it off the heat and add your flavoring. Remember-whatever color flavoring you use will color the milk. Some older recipes I read suggested making pink or other pastel colors for ladies’ luncheons. (Just don’t use arsenic…scroll down for that unfortunate incident.)
This is how your slurry will look.
This doesn’t make a lot of pudding, so I used four small containers to chill the pudding. The trick is to find things that are narrow and high, so that your finished dessert won’t be flat. My first attempt came out flat and unattractive looking since my molds were wide and shallow.
I did grease these molds with a little bit of butter or oil.
Use anything you have around! Or, you could just use one large mold.
If you’d like fruit with your blancmange, slice and toss with a little sugar. This is a very mild dessert, very much like a vanilla pudding in flavor, but firmer.
The Evening Journal of Wilimington, Delaware, relates this recipe in its January 2, 1900 edition:
Um, no.
Or, try Indian pudding or rice pudding instead, as advised above:
The Boston Globe, April 17th, 1905. This one I did not try, but maybe in the winter I will.
This is a rice pudding recipe from an 1875 edition of the Montgomery, Alabama Southern Plantation.
Here it is directly from the oven after two hours:
I was surprised that this actually came out perfectly; it seemed like an awful lot of milk but the rice soaked it all up. I interpreted a slow oven as 325; your oven may vary. You will need to put something under this as it bubbles over a bit. This is a very dense pudding and the rice is very soft. Next time I will try adding some vanilla, a bit of salt, and some raisins. The proportions I used were one cup rice, six cups of milk and one cup of sugar. I sprinkled the top with butter, cinnamon and nutmeg. To me this was best when still warm.
Lastly: please don’t use “emerald green”, or arsenic, to color your blancmange, lest your results end up significantly worse than Jo’s.
From the Yorkshire Herald, England June 17th, 1848