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Dessert

Flummery

Flummery is a sweet oatmeal pudding thickened by boiling soaked oats, sweetened with sugar and flavored with orange‑flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Flummery

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the oatmeal

  1. Soak the oatmeal in cold water for 24 hours.

  2. Pour off the water.

  3. Add fresh water and soak for another 24 hours.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the strained mixture until thick like hasty pudding, stirring constantly.

  2. Add the sugar and orange-flower water.

  3. Pour the mixture into shallow dishes.

  4. Serve with wine, cider, milk, or cream and sugar.

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 + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Oatmeal
Its starch thickens the liquid into a soft, pudding-like set as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the mild, starchy flavour of the oatmeal.
Orange-flower water
Adds a floral, aromatic fragrance to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the strained mixture until thick. Starch in the oatmeal must be heated until it swells and thickens. Stirring constantly prevents scorching on the bottom of the pan and keeps the texture smooth.

“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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