Flamri au vin blanc

It looks very pretty, and eats fine.

If the English can survive their food, they can survive anything. - George Bernard Shaw

“‘How do you make flamri?’ asks a reader. And, she adds, ‘Could you tell me why this non-rice-based dessert is called flamri, which seems to me to be a deformation of the words ‘rice flans’ (flan de riz).’ The last question is a little embarrassing. For a long time now, we've been looking for the reason behind this long-established name.” 

Even in 1928, as this unusual confection was appearing rather often in the food pages of newspapers and women’s magazines, the editorial team at L’Oeuvre couldn’t answer this basic question about the origins of the name flamri.

Lucky I’m here to do the culinary detective work, right?

Flamri seems to have first appeared in French food columns and cookbooks in the mid-to-late 19th century; and a strange name indeed for what the 1938 Larousse Gastronomique defines as “a kind of semolina pudding usually served cold, topped with a purée of raw red fruit.” The first recipe I could find was in an 1872 cookbook by Gabriel de Gonet, encyclopedist, founder of the daily Paris le Soir and director of L’Illustration Militaire and, oddly, writer of cookbooks, in his Répertoire de Cuisine Simplifiée (Simplified Cooking Repertory). While de Gonet’s recipe calls for simply for ‘starch’ (usually meaning potato starch, though it is unclear), milk, sugar, almonds, and egg whites beaten until firm, the pudding then chilled and served cold with a red fruit purée, a flamri proper isn’t necessarily made with milk. 

Our 1984 Larousse Gastronomique has a flamri defined as a “semolina flan made not with milk but with white wine and served cold, topped with a red fruit purée.”

A sweet pudding made with semolina and white wine? I’m intrigued. 

But why a flamri? 

Try saying flummery with a heavy French accent. Flummery…flammery…flamri. Yep.

Larousse Gastronomique by Prosper Montagne 1938

The first written recipe for a flummery was in Gervase Markham's 1623 Countrey Contentments, or English Huswife in which he writes: "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” The name apparently derives from the Welsh Illymru, a pudding popular in the early 17th century of oats cooked until almost solid then eaten with honey or some kind of sweet sauce, similar to a French blanc-manger, possibly coming from the word llymrig meaning soft or slippery (I can’t but imagine, with a slight shudder, the slippery consistency of this thicke and stiffe jelly made of oats). The November 1, 1935 issue of the Culinary Review, the American chef’s national magazine, explained “Many recipes for blanc-manger, which is now called that by our American pastry chefs, are content with a mixture of milk and starch  which when boiled and cooled becomes an opaque jelly for which the proper name is flummery.”

Country Contentments, or English Huswife by Gervase Markham 1623

Flummery is found in many English and American books of the 18th century, including the 1726 Dictionary Rusticum or Husbandry, Gardening, Trade, and Commerce. “Flummery,” it explains, is “a wholesome jelly made from oat-meal, but the manner of preparing it in the Western parts of England, is to take half a peck of wheat-bran…afterwards season it with sugar, rose- and orange-flower-water and let it stand to cold and thicken’d again then eat it with White or Renish Wine, or milk cream.”

Eat the sweet pudding with either wine or cream? Curiouser and curiouser, as we say. 

But back to the ingredients. The Cook’s and Confectioner’s Dictionary; Or, The Accomplish'd Housewife’s Companion of 1723 begins to separate the various forms of flummery: Flummery (oatmeal, water, sugar, orange flower water, boil till thick as Hasty Pudding, then serve), Scotch flummery (milk, egg yolks, rose water, sugar, nutmeg, pour in a buttered dish and set over a gentle fire till thick, add currants, do not stir, serve it up quick), Welsh flummery (wheat bran soaked several days in cold water, strain, boil it to jelly, sweeten with sugar, add rose water and orange flower water, set until cold, serve with cream, milk, wine, or ale). Again, this odd pudding served with wine or ale…

And then in 1770 we see, among the various versions of flummery, a French flummery (The Court and Country Confectioner: Or, The House-keeper's Guide by Mr. Borella), and again in 1783 (The London Art of Cookery, and Housekeeper's Complete Assistant by John Farley), and in 1788 (The English Art of Cookery, According to the Present Practice, Being a Complete Guide to all Housekeepers by Richard Briggs many years cook at the Globe Tavern on Fleet Street, the White Hart Tavern in Holborn and now at the Temple Coffee-House), quite possibly the English dressing up the French blanc-manger in, well, British flummery. French flummery has no starch in it at all, being a type of jelly made with milk, sugar, both rose water and orange flower water, and isinglass, a gelatine made from fish, the first time this gelling agent is used in a flummery recipe, it commonly being made from hart’s horn. French flummery is served chilled with currant jelly or stewed pears. 

“(French flummery) makes a fine dish. You may eat it with cream, or wine, or what you please. Lay round it baked pears. It looks very pretty, and eats fine.” (Every Woman Has Her Own Housekeeper, John Perkins, 1796).

This does sound a bit more promising…

In 1800, Mrs. H. Glass and Maria Wilson wrote The Complete Confectioner, Or, Housekeeper's Guide to a Simple and Speedy Method of understanding the whole Art of Confectionary and include not only the same recipe for a French flummery, but now introduce the yellow flummery, again using isinglass but now making their flummery with a pint of white wine, rather than just serving the flummery with. The white wine “jelly” is sweetened and flavored with lemon rind and juice, 8 egg yolks are added to make the jelly more of a pudding. In 1838, Mary Randolph makes her flummery with a blend of both cream and wine (sweetened and flavored with orange flower water or rose water) in The Virginia Housewife: Or, Methodical Cook. 

When the flummery finally did arrive in France, the first mentions of it weren’t all that flattering, to say the least. And certainly not tempting. Well before it made its way into cookbooks, it showed up in several language dictionaries and medical books, making the flummery sound more like a dietary mush than a sweet dessert. Possibly the first written appearance of flummery in French was in the translation of Practical Knowledge of the Most Beneficial Medicines or New Dispensary by M. Lewis (Connoissance Pratique des Médicamens les Plus Salutaires…or Nouveau Dispensaire) in 1775 which contained recipes for an oatmeal flummery, gélée d’avoine, which consisted simply in soaking the oatmeal in water several times until it forms a thick “jelly” then serving it with either honey, wine sweetened with sugar or cider sweetened with sugar, and a potato flummery, gélée de patate, which was basically mashed potatoes (cooked potatoes mashed with milk and butter), unsweetened. Both flummeries were in the chapter DIETE or foodstuffs prescribed by English doctors for the sick & convalescents. 

Even Markham’s explanation of the “Flamerie or Flumerie” continues with “the wholesomeness and goodness, nay, the very physick helps thereof being of such and to many, that I myself have heard a very revered and worthily renowned physician speak more in the commendations of that “meat”, than of any other food whatsoever…”

Ten years later, the 1785 Nouveau dictionnaire françois-anglois et anglois-françois by a M. A. Boyer simply defines the English flummery as “A kind of food made by coagulation of wheat flour. Bouillie.” Bouillie being a porridge or gruel, usually fed to children or the sick. So appetizing…. Boyer’s 1802 The Universal Dictionary, English and French and French and English goes only a step further in defining the same word as “A welsh jelly of oats. Avoine cuite en consistance, bouillis.” And in 1828, M. Da-Olmi writes in his Précis Historico-Physique d'Hygiène Navale (A Historical-Physical Survey of Naval Hygiene) “They (the Scots) also prepare and grind oats, as we do drêche (spent grain, stillage or malt). With this flour, they make a kind of flammery that they eat with quas (a strong sour beer), their favorite sauce (drink). Milk is sometimes substituted for quas in these dishes.”

And in 1869, L’Abbé Moigno again explains the word flummery to be a sort of oatmeal pudding, the oats ground then fermented and cooked until the consistence of porridge, never giving the impression that it is a sweet dessert at all, in his translation of Letheby’s On food : four Cantor lectures, delivered before the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce.

In 1872, when what seem to be the first time the flamri appears in French cookbooks - Urbain Dubois’ Cuisine de Tous les Pays : Études Cosmopolites (Cuisine from Around the World: Cosmopolitan Studies) and Gabriel de Gonet’s Répertoire de Cuisine Simplifiée, we can only assume that they bypassed the horrid gruel-type or slippery, gellified flummeries made for convalescents and Jacktars and took their recipes from those worthy English and American cookbooks. What I find curious is how flummery officially became flamri and who first decided to replace the oatmeal (or wheat bran) with semolina. Dubois’ flamri à la semoule is a semolina pudding using white wine, sugar, beaten egg whites, with a dash of salt and a lemon zest, and served chilled with a purée of red berries. De Gonet’s is more like a blanc-manger with no semolina, oats, or starch of any kind, simply milk, sugar, almonds, and beaten egg whites with that same dash of salt and lemon zest and, of course, the red berry purée. 

I’m now guessing that flummery was just a word for almost any type of chilled pudding. Other than its definition as meaningless, insincere flattery or complete nonsense. As in “Do you enjoy all this flummery, Mr. Pitt?” (The Madness of King George, 1994) Or “There is plenty of fun here, with none of the strenuous, high-pressure flummery of more fashionable places.” (Barnett’s Alpine Weekly, “Rapallo: The Charming Old Winter Station Now a Summer Resort” 10 August 1904).

Or “Fred Pamment’s restaurant has a clientèle all of its own of people who like good food and a nice jolly evening to follow without ‘flim, flam, and flummery’” (The Menton & Monte Carlo News With a List of Visitors, 27 March 1926).

Les Desserts by Henri-Paul Pellaprat 1937

Flamri begins appearing in French cookbooks at about the same time as the gâteau de semoule - semolina cake, although more a pudding than a cake. Other than a very early mention in 1808 by Grimod de La Reynière in Manuel des Amphitryons as part of a menu, we have to wait until 1825 for a recipe for a gâteau de semoule appearing in its own right, even if the instructions just call for it to be “made like the gâteau de riz”, the rice cake. Semoule or semolina seems to have been used in cooking in France since the 17th or 18th centuries but used mostly to thicken soups, often, at least in the earlier years, for health or convalescence reasons, like the bouillie, for that matter. It finally found its way into pastries in the early 19th century, even if still often considered and noted as a healthful ingredient.  “Les gâteaux de semoule sont nourrissants et très sains.” (Semolina cakes are nourishing and very healthy.) from La Pâtisserie et le Dessert by A Housekeeper in 1866.

Somehow or other, the French flamri seems to have merged the gâteau de semoule - often described as a healthful dessert, being made with semolina - and the English flummery, creating a chilled semolina pudding. The gâteau de semoule, from the start, was made almost exactly like an English flummery and eventually the French flamri, yet served warm, accompanied by a crème anglaise, a sabayon or a caramel sauce, while the flamri was always served chilled, accompanied by a red berry - raspberry or strawberry - fruit purée.

From the later 1800’s through the mid-1900’s, both the gâteau de semoule and the flamri seemed quite popular, often appearing side by side in cookbooks and quite often in those recipe columns in newspapers, both the milk and the white wine versions. Today, the flamri, sadly, seems to have faded out of fashion. 

Flamri au vin blanc - Flamri with white wine

The flamri is a really lovely dessert, light and airy, the addition of the whipped egg whites giving a mousse-like texture to the pudding. The red berry purée, lightly sweetened strawberries, raspberries, or a combination of the two, is absolutely the perfect and necessary accompaniment to this delicately flavored dessert. Or as Bertram Guégan suggests in his 1934 cookbook Le Cuisinier Français: the flamri can also be accompanied with an apricot, or peach purée perfumed with kirsch, or an apple, pear, or chestnut coulis flavored with vanilla.

Note: I will admit that my first attempts at the flamri were less than successful, yet worth the effort because it is a really delicious pudding. My first flamri went haywire for two reasons: I used fine-grained semolina for couscous rather than fine-grained semolina for  pastry; the grains were still too large. I also made it in a charlotte mold and underbaked it so it fell apart. For the second attempt, I did find fine semolina in the flour section of the supermarket and it makes all the difference. I made this one in a smaller Bundt pan with a center hole/tube and that helped, making sure it was cooked through evenly. But I tried to unmold it while still warm, which, I discovered, was a bad idea. Definitely chill the pudding before unmolding, and I do recommend lining the mold with plastic wrap.

Note: make sure you purchase fine semolina in the baking/flour aisle, not the pasta/couscous aisle. This should be semolina for pastry.

2 cups (500 ml) fruity white wine

2 cups water

1 ½ cups (250 grams) fine semolina for pastry

Pinch salt

1 ¼ cups (250 grams) sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 tablespoon orange flower water, optional but good

2 whole eggs, beaten lightly with a fork until very well blended

6 egg whites

Preheat the oven to 325°F (160°C). 

Have ready a Charlotte or pudding mold or a mold of similar size and depth preferably with a non-stick coating - I used my smaller 8-inch (20 cm) Bundt pan to make sure the center would not be undercooked. You will also need a baking pan to use as a water bath or bain-marie in which to set the filled mold for cooking.

Heat the white wine and the water together in a large saucepan.

Once the liquid comes to the boil, lower the heat to low and add the semolina in a fine, gradual stream, stirring as it is added; add a nice pinch of salt. 

Cook over a very low heat, stirring continuously, for 20 minutes.  Make sure to stir up from the bottom, constantly scraping the bottom and sides well as you stir and turn. The semoule will get very thick and this will take quite a bit of muscle!

Remove the semolina from the heat and immediately scrape into a large mixing bowl. Carefully stir in the sugar, the liquid vanilla, and the orange flower water until well blended.

Beat the egg whites until stiff, dense, and glossy like meringue.

Gradually (in 3 additions) but vigorously stir the 2 whole eggs (beaten lightly with a fork until very well blended) into the semolina. Then fold in the beaten egg whites, a third at a time; with the last addition, make sure to fold until really well blended and there are not more whites visible. 

Rinse the inside of the pudding mold with water and just turn it to pour out the excess but do not wipe it dry. (I placed strips of plastic wrap in the bottom of mine to avoid the pudding sticking when turning it out of the mold).

Spoon the flamri mixture into the mold and gently level the “batter”; set the mold into the baking pan and, using a pyrex mixing cup, pour very very hot tap water around the mold to fill the pan about an inch or two depending on the depth of your baking pan. Do this very slowly and carefully to avoid getting any water into the flamri.

Carefully place the pan in the preheated oven and bake the flamri in the bain-marie for about 50 or 55 minutes until set. 

Remove from the oven and lift the flamri from the bain-marie, place the mold on a cooling rack, and allow to cool.

Once the flamri is cool, cover and place in the refrigerator to chill and set, even for just a couple of hours. 

When ready to serve, unmold the flamri onto a serving platter and serve with a lightly sweetened fresh red fruit purée and some extra fresh berries. 

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