Most Americans are very unfamiliar with the Blancmange (which is pronounced roughly "blow-mänge), though it has a Norman French ancestry, brought to the British Isle by the Norman invasion of Saxon kingdoms, it is solidly and English dish now. The blancmange that most are a familiar with the dish in the first place is a dessert, but it didn't start out that way. Mentioned in Chaucer, the Medieval dish with made with rice and fowl or fish depending on what time of year it was prepared. It seems to have been a dish designed to serve up leftovers to the upper-crust of society with rich flare, evidenced by the liberal use rose water and expensive spice in some recipes. Other than the exotic (even by today's standards) spices used for the dish, it's basically just chicken and rice, a staple that still feeds a large portion of the world in some fashion. Anyone who is a real Monty Python fan will recollect their silly Wimbledon spoof of a blancmange playing tennis on the grass courts.... There is even a Wikipedia page for the dish.
In the early moder, sort of Middle English, the original "receipt" reads:
Blank-mange: Take capons and seeth hem. Thenne take hem up. Take almonds blanced. Grynd hem and alay hem up with the same broth. Cas the mylk in a pot. Wasisshe rys and do thereto and lat it seeth. Thanne take brawn of caponns. Teere it small and thereto. Take white greece, sugar, and salt, and cast thereinne. Lat it seeth. Then mess it forth and florish it with aneys in confyt rede other whyte and with almandes fryed in oyle and serve it forth.
2 capons* or the breast portion of two chickens
2 1/2 cups water
1 1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup blanched almonds (that is without their skins)
2 tbsp ice water
1 cup rice
1 tbsp. butter
4 tbsp. light brown sugar
Garnished:
3 to 4 tbsp. crushed aniseed
1/4 cup slivered almonds fried in 2 tbsp. oil or butter
Sprigs of watercress or parsley
*capons are rooster that have castrated (ouch!), they can sometimes be found frozen and packaged Kosher--I love these when I can find them, they come out of the box very clean, obviously, since they are Kosher certified.
1. Boil the fowl in the water and 1/4 tsp. of the salt for at least 15 minutes or until done (this will depend on the what type of fowl you are using)
2. Remove fowl, and set aside, reserve the broth.
3. Grind the blanched almonds with the ice water in a blender or small food processor...(or if you really want to go old school, a mortar and pestle).
4. Combine the ground almonds with 2 cups of the broth, let stand, stirring every few minutes for 10 minutes. Drain the resulting almonds milk into a bowl and squeeze out the ground almonds into the milk.
5. Cook the rice in the almond milk with the 1 tsp. salt, butter and brown sugar for 15 minutes on lowish heat.
6. In the meantime, dice the cooked fowl.
7. At the end of the 15 minutes, add the diced fowl to the rice and stir well, cook another 5 minutes, or until the rice is done.
8. To serve: garnish with the ground aniseed and the fried almonds. Decorate the plate with sprigs of watercress or parsley.
This all comes from a nifty little book authored by Lorna J. Sass and put out by the Metropolitan Museum of Art: To The King's Taste. It features recipes from the court of King Richard the II and has a companion book in To The Queen's Taste, featuring recipes from the court of Elizabeth I.
Below is a photo of a modern dessert blancmange:
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