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Dessert

Oatmeal Flummery

A sweet oatmeal pudding thickened with sugar and orange‑flower water, served with wine, cider, brandy, or cream.

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 ↓

Oatmeal Flummery

Ingredients

Directions

Soak and strain

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

  2. Pour off the water and add fresh water, letting it stand again.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

Make and serve

  1. Add sugar and orange-flower water, then boil until thick like hasty pudding.

  2. Pour into shallow dishes or cups and serve with wine, cider, brandy, 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

Fine white oatmeal
Its starch thickens as it boils, giving the flummery its body.
White sugar
Adds sweetness to the thickened oat mixture.
Orange-flower water
Adds a light floral aroma.

The step that matters

Boil until thick like hasty pudding. The oat starch thickens as it cooks and swells. Stopping too early leaves the flummery thin and runny, while overcooking can scorch the bottom of the pan and make it stiff.

“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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