Sickbed dish (restorative food)
Blancmange of capon for convalescents
RemedyDocumented🍯 🧂moyen35 min
A delicate white cream of pounded chicken breast, almond milk, rice, and sugar, reserved for the sick and delicate.
Why this dish? As a surgeon, Paré knew that healing was not only with the scalpel: the wounded and operated needed to be restored. Blancmange—pounded chicken breast, almond milk, and sugar—was THE dish given to the sick and weak, mild, white, easy to swallow. A dish that mirrored his more humane medicine.
When I had dressed a badly wounded man and the fever had left him, I still needed to build up his strength. For such cases I had blancmange prepared: we pound the breast of a boiled capon until it is as fine as porridge, moisten it with almond milk and rice flour, and sweeten it gently. This white, soft food the patient swallows without effort and gradually regains his vigor. For I dressed his wounds, but it was God, and good food, that healed him.
Ingredients
- •Breast of boiled capon — one (protein base)
- •Almond milk — two cups (nourishing liquid)
- •Rice flour — a spoonful (thickener)
- •Sugar — to taste (sweetness)
- •Rosewater — a few drops (flavoring)
- •Blanched almonds — a few (decoration)
How it was made : Medieval and Renaissance blancmange was savory-sweet, based on poultry and almonds (not the modern milk dessert). Physicians and cooks prescribed it to the sick for its whiteness, mildness, and digestibility, according to humoral theory.
Sources : Le Viandier de Taillevent · Platine, De honesta voluptate