Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A flavored and sweetened milk pudding thickened with cornstarch.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In cookery, a name of different preparations of the consistency of jelly, variously composed of dissolved isinglass, arrowroot, corn-starch, etc., with milk and flavoring substances. It is frequently made from a marine alga, Chondrus crispus, called Irish moss, which is common on the coasts of Europe and North America. The blancmanger mentioned by Chaucer in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, 1. 387, was apparently a compound made of capon minced with flour, sugar, and cream.
Wiktionary
- n. A simple dessert made by cooking sweetened milk with cornstarch and vanilla
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Cookery) A preparation for desserts, etc., made from isinglass, sea moss, cornstarch, or other gelatinous or starchy substance, with mild, usually sweetened and flavored, and shaped in a mold.
WordNet 3.0
- n. sweet almond-flavored milk pudding thickened with gelatin or cornstarch; usually molded
Etymologies
- Old French: blanc mangier (white food) (Wiktionary)
- Middle English blankmanger, a dish made with almond milk, from Old French blanc mangier : blanc, white (of Germanic origin; see bhel-1 in Indo-European roots) + mangier, to eat, food (from Latin manducāre; see manger). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“To serve, dip the jelly mould into a bowl of hot water to loosen the blancmange from the mould, then quickly turn it out into the centre of a serving plate.”
“I became hooked on freshly-pressed passion-fruit purée and probably drank several glasses a day, and also on the gorgeous pudim de maracuja, something like passion-fruit blancmange only delicious in a way that the term 'blancmange' would seem to render pretty unlikely, which my favourite rather scruffy neighbourhood restaurant, the "Tangerina", served.”
“But isn't that "blancmange" if I'm remembering my Monty Python correctly?”
“First person I’ve ever seen who’s writing style is best described as blancmange fFreddy”
“Third: Be classy and smart, or at least sound classy and smart - brush up on the history of some rare wines, find out about good music (doesn't include death metal), and learn how to pronounce 'blancmange'.”
“Then she nailed "blancmange", a moulded dessert, and "baignoire", a low theatre box.”
“Remember the fuss everybody made about Jason Reitman's blancmange dish Up in the Air last year?”
“The financial correspondent of the Telegraph referred to it as “hitting the market with all the impact of a feather coming to rest on a blancmange”, an insult which has rankled ever since.”
“And it is weird to get off a boring old commuter train to be faced on the platform with a vast embonpoint, half swathed in shiny scarlet shantung silk, half exposed, like being attacked by a giant blancmange with strawberries.”
The Guardian: Simon Hoggart's week: Olympic chiefs have built a Brigadoon for the rich
“Aldi, Germany's favourite bonko-thrifty purveyors of alarmingly pink sandwich meats has been operating its "no-frills supermarkets" in the UK for more than 20 years now, and is currently enjoying a boost in sales following the economy collapsing like a blancmange in a microwave.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘blancmange’.
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I Am A Starfish. I Speak With Paint.
List title totally stolen from she. Right, the stock entry for this list should be a two-word phrase where one of the words denotes a colour; even better if the expression has some metaphoric value...
black dog, tangerine dream, orange roughy, blue moon, blackguard, white house, purple rain, grey nurse, green thumb, yellow fever, sacre bleu, palo verde and 159 more...
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250 Spelling Words
A selected sampling of words for intermediate and advanced spellers.
orecchiette, rhabdomancy, guayabera, orthoepy, opisthenar, maguey, proem, ciabatta, cioppino, banns, concinnity, asthenia and 237 more...
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permanent foreign residents in English
Foreign words and phrases that are perfectly acceptable to use in formal English writing, but still maintain the aura of foreignness. They do not enjoy full citizenship, but remain "alien residents...
prima facie, a priori, a posteriori, avant la lettre, corpus delicti, l'esprit de l'esc..., sans-culotte, memento mori, gesamtkunstwerk, amour propre, guru, deja vu and 25 more...
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Impossible wind-up toys
the blob, jellyfish, cooked okra, phlogiston, blancmange, plasma, Jell-O, umbrage, wind, vowel, Portuguese man o'..., shoggoth and 4 more...
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sorbet
palette cleansers
dimpastos, salsoda, abluent, collyrium, dithering, cleanser, purifier, sorbet, sweet fruit drink, ear-lotion, tongue-soother, kirschwasser and 22 more...
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theyearofglad's list
Awesome words.
palimpsest, portmanteau, prolix, sycophant, eschew, revenant, haecceity, velleity, equipoise, caesura, soteriology, inchoate and 23 more...
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food words
weetabix, blancmange, shandy, meringue, allspice, pavlova, quiche, caster sugar, suet, moonshine, turnip, swede and 93 more...
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Foodie
As much fun to say as they are to eat.
blueberry, cider, almond, apricot, asparagus, banana, fudge, foldover, flapjacks, filbert, fig, biscuit and 217 more...
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bintalshamsa's list
My Favorite Words
weltschmerz, perspicacity, idée fixe, invigilator, salubrious, tchotchke, ex nihilo, invidious, malapropism, naïve, sardonic, elide and 1402 more...
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Infinite Jest
Words taken from Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
prorector, monograph, post-fourier, snuffle, rototremble, creatus, enfilade, subanimalistic, balletic, espadrilles, leonine, cirri and 1153 more...
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Words that make any sentence amusing ...
um. Words that make any sentence amusing to say. That undermine any contextual gravitas, or are unfamiliar and silly.
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bertilak's Words
antidisestablishm..., feldercarb, wainscoting, eleemosynary, oxymoron, fuliginous, libration, lammergeier, saxifrage, ichor, lambent, smaragdine and 414 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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words
diplopic, dolorous, farrago, surety, scuttlebutt, Arabesque, infarct, neurasthenia, lambent, expurge, univocal, simper and 395 more...
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learning
A list of words whose meanings I am learning, either because a) I don't know the meaning b) I know the meaning, but could stand to better appreciate certain inflections or secondary meanings or c) ...
louche, educe, loam, cob, sclerotic, palliate, axial, syndicalist, ecumenical, sally, fatuous, parvenu and 1381 more...
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Spam Names
Interesting words that came to me in spam emails in the "From" field. Read in pairs by order added, add the initial of your choice, and you'll get a list of "names."
menominee, burbled, abrasives, barrister, unfortunates, strolls, appareled, uncles, removal, elusive, significance, described and 180 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for blancmange.
qroqqa On cue, the largest pair of mammaries in the northern hemisphere glided into view. It was like a photo-finish in a blancmange bake-off.
—Kathy Lette, 2001, Nip 'n' Tuck Aug 13, 2008
librarymistress slumry, I agree. I've first encountered that word when watching a Monty Python sketch featuring a blancmange playing tennis. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blancmange_(Monty_Python) Oct 19, 2007
slumry Cornstarch pudding just does not have the same ring. Jun 18, 2007