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Dessert

Raspberry, Currant, Grape or Peach Flummery

A chilled fruit dessert made with gelatin, fruit juice, egg whites, and topped with fresh fruit and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Raspberry, Currant, Grape or Peach Flummery

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water until soft.

  2. Heat the raspberry juice to boiling and sweeten to taste.

  3. Stir the soaked gelatine into the hot juice until dissolved.

  4. Strain the mixture and set it on ice to cool.

Whip and set

  1. Once cool, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold into the gelatine mixture.

  2. Beat until the mixture is a solid foam that retains its shape.

  3. Pour into small molds that have been wet with cold water.

Serve

  1. Unmold and pile roughly in a dish, then top with fresh raspberries and serve with whipped cream.

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Red raspberry + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together49 recipes

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

  4. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Red raspberry + creamtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Gelatine
Sets the juice into a light, wobbly structure that holds the foam's shape.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that lightens the texture and gives the dessert its airy body.
Red raspberry juice
Provides the main flavour and colour, and the liquid that the gelatine sets.
Sugar
Sweetens the raspberry juice to balance its tartness.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites into a stable foam. The foam must be cool but still liquid-thick, then beaten to stiff peaks before folding. If the gelatine is too warm, it deflates the whites; if it is already setting, the foam will be lumpy and uneven.

Swap the red raspberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Red raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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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