While the following five blancmange recipes are listed chronologically, they should not be read as a progression of ideas in cookery. The movement of ideas, materials, skills, recipes, ingredients and local tastes travelled at different speeds, crossed nations and waterways and were adapted and adopted in various locations with varying degrees of enthusiasm and pleasure. The cookery books chosen from France, Germany, England and Italy are recognized as both important texts and excellent representatives of their era, spanning 1300 to 1570. Each blancmange recipe chosen illuminates typical variations of the dish and were copied into or printed in many other recipe collections of their time.

France: Le Viandier de Taillevent (circa 1340) by Guillaume Tirel

The oldest of the four manuscripts collectively known as Le Viandier de Taillevent was written in the early 14th century. Authorship is traditionally attributed to Guillaume Tirel (alias Taillevent) who was at the court of France for his entire working life, from his early years as kitchen boy and ending as master chef. In this manuscript, we find two specific recipes for blancmange, including a “Blanc mengier d’une chappon” in the Dishes for the Sick. Brewets and Other Things section (Scully, 1995: 207)[1] and a “Parti-colored White Dish” in Here Follow Some Remedies and Experiments Concerning Wines and Other Things.

Blanc mengier party (Parti-coloured white dish): Take blanched and peeled almonds, crush very well, steep in boiled water, [and make your milk]. For thickening you need some starch or beaten rice. When your milk has been boiled, divide it into several parts, into two pots (if you wish to make only two colours) or (if you wish) into 3 or 4 parts. It should be as solidly thickened as Frumenty, so that it can not spread out when it is set out on the plate or in the bowl. Take alkanets, turnsole, fine azure, parsley, or avens. Sieve a little saffron with the greens so that they will hold their colour better when boiled. Soak the alkanets or turnsole, and the azure likewise, in some lard. Throw some sugar into the milk when it boils, remove it to the back [of the fire], salt it, and stir it strongly until it is thickened and has taken the colour that you wish to give it (Prescott, 1989: 59).

In this parti version of blancmange, the chicken is omitted but it is included in the “Dishes for the Sick” version. The fragrance attributed to blancmange is not omitted in favour of colors. The liquid (almond milk), thickener (starch or beaten rice) and sugar are first mixed and thickened and then set to the back of the fire while the coloring agent is prepared. The pigments are for blue, red, purple or green (enhanced by yellow saffron) dyes prepared in lard. The white substance is prepared in one pot and then divided into two, three, or four parts depending on whether two, or three or four colors are being made. Once the thickening of the white mixture begins, then the color is added. The dish is considered complete when the color that is desired has been achieved. In Taillevent, the appropriate consistency (thickness) is achieved before the color. This process is quite different from how color is introduced and what it signifies in dishes today. Normally, color is introduced first, and consistency or texture tells us whether and how much a dish is cooked. Clearly the color of a dish was critical in the 14th century.

Germany: Daz Buoch von Guoter Spise (1350)

In the oldest known collection of German recipes called Das Buoch von Guoter Spise (The Book of Good Food) (Adamson, [1350] 2000: 9), the third recipe listed at the front of the book is blancmange. The recipe describes quantities and directions for combining goat’s milk, almonds, rice flour, hen’s breast and clean fat to make a white dish to which sugar and beaten violet is added before serving. A Lenten version is made with pike substituting for the poultry. There are no quantities listed for the violet; culinary historian Melitta Weiss Adamson believes this is proof that by 1350 blancmange is no longer necessarily white – and open to any type of coloration (Adamson, 2012: 168). There may be another explanation to this inclusion of mashed violet. In a dish of ingredients that may be a little off-white since they are not strained in this recipe (nor are there explicit directions on care taken to keep the ingredients white), a violet petal-dye could in fact make the dish appear whiter (more of a cool white) as well as giving it a mild fragrance (Baggett, 2012). This would in effect take the place of the fragrance from rosewater in later recipes as well as producing a very white substance.

England: The Forme of Cury (1390) and Harley MS.279 (1430)

Blancmange can be found in cookbooks across Britian from as early as the late Middle Ages, such as the recipe for Blank Mang in one of the oldest English cookery manuscripts, The Forme of Cury (c.1390) compiled by the chef to King Richard II. In this recipe the ingredients are all white and include milk, rice, almonds, chopped capon and sugar. Another English medieval recipe (c.1430) from the manuscript known as Harley MS. 279 uses the same white ingredients: almonds, sugar, rice, capon breast and a little salt. In these English recipes, only the rosewater is missing, but the careful cooking of a pure white substance is common to both.

Italy: The Art of Cookery, Maestro Martino (c. 1450)

The Italian cookery manuscript by Maestro Martino of Como entitled De arte coquinaria (The Art of Cookery) (Martino and Parzen et al, c.1450 [2005]:8) includes the same ingredients listed above, but adds ginger and three ounces of “good rose water.” In Martino’s recipe, there is significant attention to the preparation method to arrive at a pure white dish including the removal of the almond skins by soaking in cool water for a day and a night, using only the bread crumb (not the crust), peeling the ginger, passing the ingredients through a stamine (a cloth bag used to filter out impurities), cleaning the pot in advance of cooking and stirring constantly to avoid burning. Martino’s manuscript followed other artisan manuals of its time in clearly naming ingredients, but was unique by setting out specific techniques for preparing food. For example, his attention to creating a uniform paste of ingredients (using the stamine) gave the reader direction about the texture or mouth-feel of food. The recipe notes that upon completion, the white dish part may then be colored yellow with saffron and egg yolk and the taste altered to be more sour than the white version by adding verjuice (an unripe-grape juice). It is interesting that while the visual change in color seems to be the most important aspect, Martino also notes the accompanying alteration to the taste of the dish. Clearly, having a variety of dishes that are all different colors but that all taste the same is not desirable. In summary, although color is important, it is not separated from the other senses.

Italy: On Right Pleasure and Good Health, Platina (circa 1470)

In the same timeframe as the publication of Martino’s cookery book is what could best be described as a treatise on health and well-being, De honesta voluptate (On Right Pleasure and Good Health) by Bartolomeo Sacchi, later known as Platina, and first published in 1474 (Platina and Milham [1474] 1998). The treatise was published five years before Platina’s appointment to the prestigious position of head librarian of the Vatican in Rome.[2] Platina’s book includes instructions on how to live well in addition to philosophical ideas and recipes. He acknowledges his reverence of the cook Maestro Martino and copies the majority of Martino’s cookbook[3] into his own recipe section. His work was published in Latin and printed in multiple copies, allowing for expanded circulation of his ideas; the text was later translated into several languages and became immensely popular.

Platina’s recipe for blancmange includes almonds for almond milk, boned breast of capon, bread softened with verjuice or broth, ginger and sugar and finally at completion, rosewater. The same attention to purity in the ingredients and final dish are maintained including use of a clean pot, slow indirect cooking over the fire and constant stirring. Interestingly, Platina also indicates where in the meal this dish is to be served, namely in among the meat dishes or separately in smaller dishes. Spices and herbs were understood as having three functions – to temper the other ingredients, as well as to contribute flavor, and to give the desired color (Scully in Adamson, 2002: 59). The word temper comes from the Latin temperarae, meaning to mingle.

Italy: The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1570)

In the renowned Italian cookery book published in 1570, Bartolomeo Scappi’s Opera, is a recipe for blancmange in six different variations (Scappi and Scully [1570] 2008: 49). In Book II: Meat-Day Dishes, we find blancmange as Recipe 162: To Prepare a thick soup of whitedish, the ingredients are milk (goat or cow), flour (Salerno or Milan rice), hen (the breast meat of a freshly killed bird), a little salt, a great quantity of sugar, and finally rosewater.  Scappi’s recipe is very detailed in comparison to earlier records of the dish, giving quantities for ingredients, instructions and outcomes. His description of the care needed to ensure the quality and purity of the ingredients, the choice of a good pot (without dents to avoid sticking and hence burning) and attention to stirring continuously are aimed at the final goal of producing a white dish that is “a lustrous white, its taste consistent with its fine appearance…with sugar over it” (223-4). The recipe is followed by options for the cook based on what the dish would be served with, seasonal variation and availability of the ingredients, and time constraints. Each variation contains warnings on what to do to keep the dish as white as possible.

I prepared Scappi’s various blancmange recipes with some degree of success, and the use of rice and fat in place of soaking bread and cooking chicken breast shortens the preparation time, but maintains a white color at the end. The taste is however quite different as is the experience and rhythm of the preparation. The (re)constructions reveal the nuances of taste and tempo in each variation. As I described at the beginning of Part 2, the act of engaging in the practices of the early modern artisan through (re)construction reveals materiality as engaged with the spaces, places and practices and distinct character of an absent past (Bille and Sørensen, 2016: 3).

These various late medieval and Renaissance recipes resemble each other in the extreme care taken to achieve a very white food via the combination of a list of very similar ingredients, and the substitution of fish for meat on Lenten days. White is often paired with the unique fragrance of rosewater and appreciated by cooks who reproduced the recipe in practices and copied it into their own collections over many centuries.

[1] It is interesting that Scully translates the French title “Blanc mengier d’une chappon” into “An Invalid’s Dish of White Capon”. While the recipe does reside in the section carrying the title “Pour Malades” in two of the four manuscripts (BN and VAT) the title “Blanc mengier d’une chappon” simply translates as “White Dish or White Eat of Capon.” Scully’s hypothesis that blancmange is primarily a bland dish for the sick seems to extend itself across ideas where it may not be warranted. While Scully’s statement that blancmange was administered to the sick may indeed be true, his further step to remove “white” from the title and replace it with “bland” turns us away from the meaning behind the concoction in the first place.

[2] The publication of De honesta precedes Platina’s encounters with the Neoplatonists in Rome, including Marsilio Ficino.

[3] Martino of Como, The Art of Cooking, 8. Ballerini concludes that Platina, who subsequently publishes these recipes in a collection of his own, likely met Martino in the summer of 1463 and obtained a copy of his recipe collection.