Flummery

History

As printed in Mary Randolph's The Virginia House-Wife (1824), flummery is a moulded set cream: 'One measure of jelly, one of cream, and half a one of wine; boil it fifteen minutes over a slow fire, stirring all the time; sweeten it, and add a spoonful of orange flower or rose water; cool it in a mould, turn it in a dish, and pour around it cream, seasoned in any way you like'. The name is older than this sweet form: 'flummery' derives from the Welsh llymru, a dish 'made from sour oatmeal and husks', attested in English from the 1620s. It is first recorded in Gervase Markham's writing of 1623, describing an oatmeal jelly known 'in Chesheire and Lankasheire' as 'Flamerie or Flumerie'. By the 18th century English cookery books applied 'flummery' to a moulded jelly dessert set with 'a stiff gelatin made from either boiled cow's feet or isinglass' — for example Hannah Glasse (1760) and John Perkins (1796). Randolph's cream-and-wine version belongs to this later moulded tradition. The record does not document who first devised this particular cream-and-wine flummery, and no source ties it to wealth or social status.

Ingredients

• 1 measure jelly
• 1 measure cream
• 0.5 measure wine
• sugar
• 1 spoonful orange flower water or rose water
• cream for serving

Instructions

1. Combine the jelly, cream, and wine in a pot. Boil over a slow fire for fifteen minutes, stirring constantly. Sweeten to taste and add a spoonful of orange flower water or rose water. Pour the mixture into a mould and allow it to cool. Turn the set flummery out onto a serving dish and pour seasoned cream around it as desired.