No. 3168

Flamri of Semolina

Flamri de Semoule

Boil two quarts of milk; incorporate slowly into it half a pound of semolina, so as to obtain a light preparation, then cook it while stirring for twelve to fifteen minutes; when creamy mix in a pound of sugar and a pinch of salt; cook again for ten minutes, then take from the fire and quickly add six to seven beaten whites with a little sugar stirred in; work the preparation with a whip so that it combine well, and put it back on the fire, while stirring steadily. Watch the preparation attentively so as to remove it at the first signs of a boil, then mix in an ounce of grated bitter almonds. Fill two or three molds to the top with this, having them simply dipped in cold water and still wet in the inside; let cool off for at least six hours in a very cold place, or in the ice-box, and unmold the contents on dishes; cover the bottoms with a sweetened raw raspberry pulp.

← No. 3167 Flamri of Cream Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3169 Apple Flawn—Latticed →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

The failure point is a single line near the end: an ounce of grated bitter almonds stirred into a cold, uncooked-again dessert.

Bitter almonds are the problemBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the kernel is crushed or grated and meets moisture. Here an ounce is grated in after the pan comes off the fire and the dessert is then only chilled, so there is no further cooking to drive off the volatile gas.
The quantity is not trivialAn ounce of bitter almonds is roughly twenty to thirty kernels, and the toxic dose for an adult has long been estimated in the range of a few dozen. Divided among two or three molds of dessert, the per-serving dose is unpredictable and the margin is far too narrow to treat as a flavouring.
You cannot substitute your way out of it and call it the same recipeBitter almonds are not sold as food in the United States and are restricted in many other markets. If you want a flamri of semolina, use a current recipe; do not attempt to scale down or heat-treat the almonds here.
The rest of the method is period-normalFor context only: semolina cooked in milk, sweetened heavily, lightened with beaten whites and brought just to the edge of a boil is standard nineteenth-century entremets practice, and the raw raspberry pulp underneath is the intended counterweight to a pound of sugar.
Why the molds are wettedDipping the molds in cold water and leaving them wet inside is the era's release trick for starch-set puddings, which have no gelatine and will otherwise cling. It is sound and still works with cornstarch or semolina desserts.

A Little History

Flamri is a French dessert of the classic repertoire, a molded semolina pudding lightened with egg white, chilled until firm and served with an uncooked fruit purée; Ranhofer places it among the cold entremets alongside the cream version at No. 3167. The name is sometimes linked, speculatively, to flamiche and to the Old French root that gives English flawn — the latticed apple flawn happens to be the very next entry — a family of words for flat baked or molded dishes, though the origin of flamri is obscure. Bitter almonds appear constantly in nineteenth-century confectionery, where they were the standard source of what we now buy as almond extract; only later regulation pushed the kernels off the grocer's shelf in favour of benzaldehyde flavouring.