flummery a name derived from the Welsh llymru, originally meant a dish made by soaking fine oatmeal (see oats) in water for a long time and then boiling and stirring the liquid until it was almost solid (see sowans). It could also be made with oat bran. C. Anne Wilson (1973), in thus describing it, goes on to give a quotation from Gervase Markham (1631) which gives the impression of a peasant dish beginning to climb up the social scale. Markham praised flummery for its ‘wholesomeness and rare goodness’, and remarked that ‘some eat it with honey, which is reputed the best sauce; some with wine, either sack, claret or white; some with strong beer or strong ale, and some with milk’. The climb continued, and towards the end of the 17th century the name flummery began to be used for something different: a sweet jelly made with cream or ground almonds, set in moulds by means of calf’s foot or isinglass or hartshorn, and resembling the earlier leach, which was a kind of blancmange.
