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Dessert

Dutcb Flummery

A sweet wine dessert thickened with isinglass and egg yolks, flavored with lemon and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Dutcb Flummery

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine white wine, sugar, lemon juice, lemon peel, and cinnamon stick in a saucepan and boil gently.

  2. Add the dissolved isinglass and strain the mixture.

Thicken and set

  1. Whisk the egg yolks in a bowl and mix with the strained liquid.

  2. Stir the mixture over low heat until it simmers, but do not let it boil.

  3. Continue stirring until the mixture is completely cool, then pour it into a mold.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the liquid and add richness to the set dessert.
Isinglass
Gelatinizes the liquid so the flummery sets firm when cooled.
White wine
Provides the main liquid and its acidity and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the wine and balances the lemon's acidity.

The step that matters

Stirring over low heat without boiling. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat but curdle and turn grainy if they boil. Keeping the mixture just at a simmer and stirring constantly lets it thicken smoothly.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, sugar, lemon, egg):

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, sugar, lemon, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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