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Apple Flummery
Pare, core, and slice two pounds of apples, and put them into a stewpan with one pound of sugar, the finely-chopped rind of a lemon, and sufficient water to cover them. Let them stew gently until quite tender, then drain them from the juice, and beat them to a pulp. Soak an ounce of gelatine in a little cold water for twenty minutes. Put it into a saucepan with the apple-juice, and stir until the gelatine is dissolved: add the apples and a cupful of cream. Stir for a few minutes over the fire, but do not let the mixture boil. Turn it into a mould that has been soaked in cold water, let it stand until stiff, then turn out, and pour a good custard over it. Time to stiffen, eight or ten hours. Probable cost, 1s. 10d., exclusive of the custard. Sufficient for six persons.
A Victorian moulded apple cream, set with a great deal of gelatine and served under pouring custard. Two things decide whether it works: keeping the mixture below a simmer once the gelatine is in, and being honest about how much gelatine modern powder actually represents.
- Never let it boilOnce the gelatine is dissolved the pan should stay well below a simmer. Boiling both weakens the set and risks splitting the cream into the acid apple purée.
- The gelatineAn ounce is about 28 g, roughly four standard 7 g envelopes of modern powdered gelatine. Nineteenth-century gelatine was less reliably standardised, and this quantity will give a very firm, sliceable flummery rather than a wobbling cream; 14-20 g gives a softer set that still turns out.
- SugarA pound of sugar to two pounds of apples reflects both Victorian taste and the sour cooking apples of the period. With modern Bramleys 8-10 oz is ample; with eating apples, half that.
- Apples and juiceAbout 2 lb of apples, pared and cored, gives roughly 1 1/2 lb of flesh. Cover them barely with water, or the drained juice will be thin and the set weak. Reduce the juice slightly before adding the gelatine if it looks watery.
- StewpanAny wide, heavy non-reactive pan. Avoid untinned copper or bare cast iron, which discolours the purée with acid fruit.
- "A cupful of cream"The measure is not standardised in the original; take it as somewhere between 8 and 10 fl oz of single or pouring cream. Double cream works but makes the result heavier and closer to a fool.
- The mouldSoaking the mould in cold water was to help release the set jelly; a light film of neutral oil does the job better. To turn out, dip the mould briefly in hot water and invert onto a wetted plate so it can be slid into position.
- Setting timeEight to ten hours was for a cold larder. In a modern refrigerator it will be firm in four to five hours, but overnight gives the cleanest turn-out.
- The custardThe "good custard" is a pouring custard - crème anglaise, egg yolks, sugar and milk thickened over low heat, not a baked or set custard. Serve cold. Six portions, as stated.
Flummery began as something quite different: the Welsh llymru, a sour jelly made by steeping oatmeal husks in water until they fermented, then boiling the strained liquid until it thickened. English cooks borrowed the name in the seventeenth century, and as the dish climbed the social scale the oatmeal dropped out, replaced first by isinglass or calf's-foot jelly and later, as here, by commercial gelatine sold by the ounce. By the time Cassell's was compiling its dictionary, a flummery meant simply a moulded cream or fruit purée stiffened with gelatine and unmoulded whole - the sort of dish that justified a household's collection of tinned copper moulds. The word's other meaning, empty flattery or nonsense, is generally traced to the same source: something soft, bland and insubstantial. The costing of 1s. 10d. is a reminder of what these books were for, since gelatine, cream and a pound of sugar together made this a considered expense rather than an everyday pudding.