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Dessert

Another Way to Make Dutch Flummery

A sweet, lemony dessert made by boiling wine, water, lemon juice, peel, and sugar, then adding isinglass, egg yolks, and cooling.

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 ↓

Another Way to Make Dutch Flummery

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil white wine, water, lemon juice, lemon peel, and sugar for 10 minutes.

  2. Dissolve isinglass in the mixture.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Gradually mix the strained mixture with beaten egg yolks.

  5. Heat over low flame, stirring for 5 minutes.

  6. Stir until cold and pour into a mold.

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. Sugar + eggtop 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, jelly-like body as it cools.
Egg yolks
Enrich the mixture and thicken it gently when heated, adding richness and a smooth texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and gives the flummery its bright flavour.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the mixture and balances the sharpness of the lemon.

The step that matters

Heat over low flame, stirring for 5 minutes. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if heated too quickly or left unstirred. Gentle, constant stirring over low heat thickens the custard smoothly without cooking the yolks into lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  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, sugar, egg. 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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