Blancmange

Appears in
Pride and Pudding: The History of British Puddings, Savoury and Sweet
Pride and Pudding

By Regula Ysewijn

Published 2016

  • About

Mentioned in the prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1475), this dish – the name of which means ‘white food’ – is one of the most international early dishes of European cuisine. From the Middle Ages onwards the name of this dish in its various forms – blanc mange, blanc manger, blamange, manjar branco, biancomangiare – can be found in most European cookery books.

Blancmange was a dish for the elite in the Middle Ages; its ingredients of rice, almonds, flavourings such as saffron and garnishes such as pomegranate were exotic and luxurious and only available to those with deep pockets. By the fifteenth century, however, many of these exotic goods, including rice, were being cultivated in Europe, making them more widely available – though still only among the higher tiers of society – rather than exclusively for the king’s table.