| Flummery | |
| Place Of Origin: | Great Britain |
| Type: | Pudding |
| Main Ingredient: | Starch grains, milk |
Flummery is a starch-based, sweet, soft dessert pudding which originated in Great Britain during the early modern period. The word has also been used for other semi-set desserts.
The name is first known in Gervase Markham's 1623 Countrey Contentments, or English Huswife (new ed.) vi. 222 "From this small Oat-meale, by oft steeping it in water and clensing it, and then boyling it to a thicke and stiffe jelly, is made that excellent dish of meat which is so esteemed in the West parts of this Kingdome, which they call Wash-brew, and in Chesheire and Lankasheire they call it Flamerie or Flumerie".[1] [2]
The name is derived from the Welsh word for a similar dish made from sour oatmeal and husks, Welsh: llymru, which is of unknown origin. It is also attested in variant forms such as thlummery or flamery in 17th and 18th century English.[3] [4] The word "flummery" later came to have generally pejorative connotations of a bland, empty, and unsatisfying food. From this use, "flummery" developed the meaning of empty compliments, unsubstantial talk or writing, and nonsense.
A pint of flummery was suggested as an alternative to 4oz of bread and a 0.5imppt of new milk for the supper of sick inmates in Irish workhouses in the 1840s.[5]
In Australia and New Zealand, post World War II, flummery was the name given to a different foodstuff, a mousse dessert made with beaten evaporated milk, sugar, and gelatine. Also made using jelly crystals, mousse flummery became established as an inexpensive alternative to traditional cream-based mousse. In the Queensland town of Longreach, it was a staple food in the 1970s and in the New South Wales town of Forbes, it was a fall-back dessert in the 1950s. The American writer Bill Bryson described flummery as an early form of the blancmange dessert known in the United States.[6]