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Dessert

Yellow Flummery

A dessert made from isinglass, water, wine, lemon, egg yolks, and sugar.

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

Yellow Flummery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the isinglass

  1. Beat and open the isinglass, then wash it well.

  2. Put the isinglass into a bowl and pour boiling water over it.

  3. Cover the bowl until it is almost cold.

Make the custard

  1. Add white wine, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and sweeten to taste.

  3. Combine the egg yolks with the isinglass mixture in a tossing pan, stirring continuously.

  4. Once it boils, strain through a fine sieve.

Set

  1. When almost cold, pour into cups or moulds and let stand overnight.

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. Egg + sugartop 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
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Egg yolks
Enrich the mixture and give it a yellow colour and creamy body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and flavour.
White wine
Adds liquid and aromatic flavour to the jelly.

The step that matters

Combining the egg yolks with the isinglass mixture. Stirring continuously keeps the egg yolks from scrambling or curdling as they heat. Egg proteins coagulate when heated, so the mixture must be kept moving while it comes to the boil.

Swap the lemon

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

  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, egg, sugar. 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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