Creamy dessert from a bygone age

Popular from the 17th to 19th centuries, flummery is a creamy moulded dessert perfect for gracing the spring table

ASWEET, OAT-BASED, SET dessert, flummery evolved from a bland, greyish coloured dish, once fed to the sick, to an extravagant centrepiece to impress dinner guests.

Originally a jelly made by steeping oatmeal in water and boiling the strained liquor with sugar, it may have derived from a medieval oat broth, and its name is thought to come from llymru, a sour Welsh porridge.

The first record of a more appealing version of the pudding was in the 1623 book English

Huswife, and as time went on, its texture was achieved with gelatine. Recipes were enhanced by the addition of cream, eggs and fruit, and it was flavoured with rose water, almonds or honey. Cookery expert Elizabeth Raffald wrote of the use of decorative moulds in 1769 and penned a recipe for a flummery shaped like a temple, said to have been noted down by an entranced Princess Victoria a century later.

According to one legend, Flora MacDonald made the dish for Prince Charles before he escaped following his defeat at Culloden.

“it will turn out without putting it into warm water, for water takes off the figures of the mould, and makes the flummery look dull”

Elizabeth Raffald, The Experienced English Housekeeper