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Dessert

Apple Flummery

A dessert made by stewing apples with sugar and lemon, then adding gelatin, cream, and setting into a mold.

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 ↓

Apple Flummery

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the apples

  1. Put apples, sugar, lemon rind, and water in a saucepan.

  2. Stew gently until apples are tender, then drain and beat to a pulp.

Set the flummery

  1. Soak gelatine in cold water for 20 minutes.

  2. Add gelatine to apple juice in a saucepan and stir until dissolved.

  3. Mix in the apple pulp and cream, stirring over low heat without boiling.

  4. Pour mixture into a mould soaked in cold water and let it stand until stiff.

Serve

  1. Turn out and pour custard over it before serving.

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. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Apple + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,089 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Apples
Form the bulk and body of the dessert, with tart fruit flavour.
Gelatine
Sets the mixture into a soft, sliceable gel as it cools.
Cream
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture that softens the fruit flavour.
Sugar
Provides sweetness that balances the tartness of the apples.
Lemon rind
Adds a bright citrus aroma to the apple base.

The step that matters

Mix in the apple pulp and cream, stirring over low heat without boiling.. Boiling the cream can cause it to curdle or separate, and overheating weakens gelatine's ability to set, which can leave the flummery grainy or runny.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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