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Dessert

To Make Flummery

Flummery is a sweet almond and cream dessert made with stock, sugar, and rose water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

To Make Flummery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch the almonds by pouring boiling water over them, then remove the skins.

  2. Soak the kernels in cold water, then beat them in a mortar with a little rose water.

Make the flummery

  1. Combine the beaten almonds with the calf's-foot stock and sweeten with loaf sugar.

  2. Bring to a boil and strain through muslin or gauze.

  3. Once slightly cooled, mix in the thick cream and stir often until it thickens and cools.

Mould and set

  1. Wet your molds with cold water and pour in the flummery.

  2. Let it stand for at least 5 to 6 hours before turning out.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's-foot stock
Its natural gelatin sets the mixture into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the set jelly.
Sweet almonds
Provide the main nutty almond flavour and body once beaten into the stock.
Bitter almonds
Add a deeper, more pronounced almond aroma to the flavouring.

The step that matters

Stirring the cream in as it cools. Adding cream while the mixture is only slightly cooled keeps it from separating or going grainy, and stirring often keeps it smooth while it thickens and sets.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream, rose):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Walnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, rose. 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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