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Dessert

Blackberry Flummery

A sweet blackberry dessert thickened with rice flour and sweetened with brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Blackberry Flummery

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, combine blackberry juice and brown sugar.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix rice flour with cold water until smooth.

  3. Stir the rice flour mixture into the pot with blackberry juice and sugar.

  4. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thickened to a jelly-like consistency.

  5. Season with ground cinnamon to taste.

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. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Blackberry + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together362 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Blackberry + ricetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

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

Blackberry juice
Provides the main liquid, flavour and colour of the dessert.
Rice flour
Thickens the juice as its starch swells with heat, setting the mixture into a jelly-like texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavour to the blackberry juice.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice flour mixture into the juice. Starch lumps form if the slurry is added unevenly or left to settle; stirring constantly while cooking keeps the starch dispersed so it thickens smoothly as it heats.

Swap the blackberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, rice, flour, cinnamon):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Blackberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, rice, flour, cinnamon. 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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