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Dessert

Raspberry Flummery

A chilled dessert made from stewed raspberries, lemon, sugar, water, gelatin, cream, and cochineal for color.

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

Raspberry Flummery

Ingredients

Directions

Make the raspberry base

  1. Remove the stems from the raspberries and stew them with the sugar, lemon, and water until tender.

  2. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

  3. Soak the gelatine in the cream while the raspberries are cooking.

Set and serve

  1. Heat the cream until the gelatine is completely dissolved.

  2. Combine the cream and gelatine with the raspberry pulp and mix well.

  3. Color with cochineal and pour into a wetted mold.

  4. Once firm, dip the mold briefly in very hot water and turn it out onto a glass dish.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Raspberries
Provide the main flavor and fruit pulp that forms the body of the dessert.
Gelatine
Sets the cream and raspberry mixture into a firm, sliceable structure as it cools.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture that softens the fruit's sharpness.
Sugar
Sweetens the raspberries and balances the tartness of the fruit and lemon.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine completely in the cream. Undissolved gelatine grains will not set evenly and leave a gritty or rubbery texture. Heating the cream fully melts the gelatine so it distributes through the mixture and sets smoothly as it cools.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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