Blancmange is a sweet dessert popular throughout Europe commonly made with milk or cream and sugar thickened with rice flour, gelatin, corn starch, or Irish moss, and often flavoured with almonds.
A blancmange set on a glass platter
The Catalan menjar blanc, a variant of blancmange made without gelatine and mostly typical from Reus and also from l'Alguer
Carrageenans or carrageenins are a family of natural linear sulfated polysaccharides that are extracted from red edible seaweeds. Carrageenans are widely used in the food industry, for their gelling, thickening, and stabilizing properties. Their main application is in dairy and meat products, due to their strong binding to food proteins. In recent years, carrageenans have emerged as a promising candidate in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications as they resemble native glycosaminoglycans (GAGs). They have been mainly used for tissue engineering, wound coverage, and drug delivery.
Underwater Eucheuma farming in the Philippines for carrageenan production
Eucheuma denticulatum being farmed for iota-carrageenan in an off-bottom cultivation in Tanzania