Hello friends and welcome. Today I am featuring another recipe with a wonderfully evocative name – Passionfruit Flummery. The name flummery makes me think of something that is light and fluttery, like a gorgeous butterfly. And also something summery and maybe even a little bit shimmery! Now, I can’t promise fluttery or shimmery but this is a delicious summery dessert!  This recipe for Passionfruit Flummery comes from 250 Quick and Easy Recipes which also contained the recipe for the wonderful Savoury Upside Down Pie.  

So what exactly is a flummery.  Very simply it is a whipped jelly confection.  The whipping makes it feather-light and it almost melts in your mouth!  The one odd, I thought ingredient was that you needed to add some flour to the jelly mix.  I am not sure why – it did turn the jelly mix opaque rather than the normal clear colour but I can’t figure out if it serves another purpose as well.  If we have any flummery experts out there, please let me know!

The other nice thing about this dessert is…you know those people who don’t like desserts that are too sweet?  I personally am not one of them.  I love a sweet dessert, however my flavour profile also runs to sweet / sour as being right in my wheelhouse.  This is definitely a dessert for those people who do not like desserts that are overly sweet.  The passionfruit and the citrus juices keep it fresh, zesty and light!  

Passionfruit Flummery – The Recipe

The flummery will keep in the fridge for about a week  – if you can make it last that long!  It is very more-ish!  I went in for a spoonful and ended up making a dent this big!  I really could not stop!

Flummery Fun “Facts”

I found some facts about flummeries when I was researching this post.  Now some of these seem to be more “ïnternet” facts than factual facts but let’s see how we go…

• Flummerries started out as a sour porridge-like dish in 17th Century England
• The name comes from the Welsh word “llymru” meaning sour oatmeal jelly boiled with the husks
• The name was also spelt thlummery and flamery
• In Australia and New Zealand, the name flummery was given to a mousse like dessert that used gelatine instead of cream which was more expensive

So far so good.  However, I’m less convinced about this:

• Flummery was a fall-back dessert in the New South Wales Town of Forbes in the 1950s.

Huh…weirdly specific.  When I was in school we had to learn a song called The Streets of Forbes which is about the death of the bushranger Ben Hall. And that is pretty much all I know about Forbes.  So maybe, there and nowhere else, people were scoffing down flummery like there was no tomorrow in the 1950’s.  But I’m dubious.

I’m even more dubious about this one:

• In the Queensland town of Longreach, it was staple food in the 1970s

Yep, right up there with flour, rice and corn…flummery!

Longreach

Of course then, I had to Google Longreach to see if there was any reason why it might be the whipped jelly capital of Australia.  And I swear this is true…the very first question that pops up is:

Which is intriguing…what is the smell in Longreach?  Is it something to do with the overconsumption of flummery?

According to this article the lanes of Longreach “were always foul with the rank and unpleasant smell of goats’ faeces and urine”.

.And based on that we can whip through the rest of the questions pretty quickly:

2) Zero is the number of days you need in Longreach.  Unless you have no sense of smell.  Then, stay as long as you like. 

3) Longreach is famous for the stench of goats. 

4) Whenever the wind is blowing those goaty fumes away.

Well, this post took a turn…we started with pretty butterflies and ended with dead bushrangers and stinky goats! 

Have a great week, I hope it doesn’t end up with stinky goats!

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