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Dessert

Scotch Flummery

A thickened milk and cream dessert made with egg yolks, rose water, sugar, nutmeg, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Scotch Flummery

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks with rose water, sugar, and nutmeg.

  2. Mix in the milk and cream.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the mixture in a dish over a pan of boiling water, covering it closely.

  2. Cook until it thickens, then sprinkle the currants on top.

  3. Do not stir while cooking; serve hot when it is stiff.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Rose + curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Currant + white winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Rose + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as they set, giving the flummery its stiff, custard-like body.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother, softer texture to the set custard.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the egg yolks thicken into a custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the richness of the cream and yolks.

The step that matters

Cook without stirring. Egg proteins set gently as the custard heats. Gentle, covered cooking over water and no stirring keeps it from curdling or turning grainy, so it thickens smoothly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, egg, rose, sugar, nutmeg, white wine. 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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