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Dessert

Blackberry Flummery

A sweet, thickened blackberry dessert made with sugar, corn starch, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and nutmeg work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Blackberry Flummery

Ingredients

Directions

Make the flummery

  1. Heat the stewed blackberries until scalding hot and run them through a sieve.

  2. In a bowl, mix the sugar and corn starch with the cold water until smooth.

  3. Add the sugar mixture and nutmeg to the hot blackberries.

  4. Cook over hot water, stirring constantly until thickened.

Serve

  1. Serve with plain cream or custard. It is better when eaten cold.

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. Corn + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

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

  3. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Stewed blackberries
Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and body of the dessert.
Corn starch
Thickens the hot berry liquid into a smooth, set mass as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the blackberries.

The step that matters

Cook over hot water, stirring constantly until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens fully when it is heated and stirred; stirring prevents lumps and scorching, and a smooth set depends on the starch gelatinising evenly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Cuminfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, sugar. 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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