Skip to main content
Dessert

Dutch Flummery

A sweet dessert made by boiling wine, water, lemon, sugar, isinglass, and egg yolks, then cooling and setting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: White wine and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,832 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Dutch Flummery

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Boil white wine and water with lemon juice and peel for 10 minutes.

  2. Add loaf sugar and dissolved isinglass, then strain the mixture.

  3. Gradually mix in the beaten yolks of 5 eggs.

  4. Return to heat and stir for 5 minutes without boiling.

Set

  1. Let it cool completely, then pour into a shape.

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. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

  5. White wine + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Isinglass
Gelatine-like setting agent that makes the flummery firm once cooled.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture and add richness when stirred gently over heat.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the flummery and balances the acidity of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity and bright flavour that cuts the sweetness.
White wine
Contributes liquid and flavour to the base of the flummery.

The step that matters

Return to heat and stir without boiling. Egg yolks curdle and lose their thickening power if they boil, so the mixture must stay just below boiling while it thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, sugar, egg. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes