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Dessert

Blackberry Flummery

A sweet blackberry dessert thickened with cornstarch and served with sugar and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Blackberry Flummery

Ingredients

Directions

Make the flummery

  1. Place blackberries and water in a saucepan and boil slowly for 10 minutes without stirring.

  2. Moisten cornstarch with cold water and stir into the berries.

  3. Let the mixture thicken, then remove from heat and add sugar.

Serve

  1. Once cool, serve with additional sugar and cream.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Blackberries
Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and body of the flummery.
Cornstarch
Thickens the berry liquid as it heats, setting it into a soft, spoonable texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the blackberries.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornstarch into the berries. Cornstarch must be moistened with cold water first so it disperses without lumps. Added dry, it clumps and thickens unevenly. The mixture must then be allowed to thicken as it heats, since starch gelatinises only once it reaches a simmer.

“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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