It’s always good to learn new words. I don’t advise eating the stuff, though.
It doesn’t sound like something I would seek out. Is like terra cotta or flan?
Like custard or (British) gravy its reputation has been forged by countless school , hospital and other institutional kitchens. The Pinot Grigio of the dessert menu. Done right can be good, usually it’s meh. Too often made from powder.
There’s also rice pudding ….
1 Like
Extraterrestrial blancmanges that turn everyone into Scotsmen so that the aliens can win Wimbledon is the plot of a famous Monty Python extended sketch. I can’t even begin to explain it — the top Scottish tennis player is named Angus Podgorny, for example — so here is the most concise summary I have found:
https://montypython.fandom.com/wiki/Blancmange
Blancmange started its life as a kind of spicy meat pie evidently. The current version is a Victorianised pudding. Its ingredients are milk, cornstarch and sugar (some recipes evidently gussy it up with lemon peel or almonds according to the internet; I’ve never tasted that, but I doubt it would help), which are baked into a sweet, bland, goopy pudding. I am a scholar of Victorian literature and culture, but such horrors are not what the period is justly renowned for.
My first encounter with blancmange was from The Canterbury Tales, read in high school class.
In the prologue a chef, Roger, is described as highly skilled, and known for his blancmange. He is further described as having a running ulcer on his leg.
1 Like