Flummery - History and Etymology

History and Etymology

Wales

Flummery was essentially a Welsh dish which subsequently entered the culinary repertoire of the English. It was first mentioned in 1620s, "a type of coagulated food" like sour oatmeal jelly boiled with the husks, or, as an acid preparation from the husks and fragments of oats, fermented and subacid oatmeal, its acridity and sharpness explaining the Welsh etymology of lym=sharp, similar to the Scotch sour sowens. Another improbable etymology sends to the German Pflaumerei (plum tarte), there is a variety of flummery called 'plum flummery'. The Welsh flummery is called llumruwd (sour sediment) and it is formed of the husks of the oatmeal roughly sifted out, soaked in water till it becomes sour, then strained and boiled, when it forms a pale brown sub-gelatinous mass, usually eaten with abundance of new milk. The true Welsh flummery is called in parts of Wales “sucan blawd” (steeped meal).

Elsewhere in Britain

Traditional British flummeries were, like the Scottish porridges, often oatmeal-based and cooked to achieve a smooth and gelatinous texture; sugar and milk were typically added and occasionally orange flower water. The dish is typically bland in nature. The dish gained stature in the 17th century where it was prepared in elaborate molds and served with applause from the dining audience.

The word also came to mean generally dishes made with milk, eggs and flour in the late seventeenth and during the nineteenth centuries. It later came to have more negative connotations as a bland, empty and unsatisfying food.

In Australia and U.S.

In Australia, post World War II, flummery was known as 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 Australia. The writer Bill Bryson described flummery as an early form of blancmange.

In Ireland

A pint of flummery was suggested as an alternative to 4 ounces (110 g) of bread and a 0.5 imperial pints (0.28 l) of new milk for the supper of sick inmates in Irish Workhouses in the 1840s.